Jan 2, 2019
Best of 2018...
01 Goat Girl - Goat Girl (Rough Trade,2018)
02 Nils Frahm - All Melody (Erased Tapes,2018)
03 Pram - Across The Meridian (Domino,2018)
04 Jaakko Eino Kalevi - Out Of Touch (Weird World,2018)
05 Shame - Songs of Praise (Dead Oceans,2018)
06 The Orielles - Silver Dollar Moment [Heavenly Recordings]
07 Of Montreal - White Is Relic Irraelis Mood (Polyvinyl,2018)
08 Connan Mockasin - Jassbusters (Mexican Summer,2018)
09 The Good The Bad & The Queen - Merrie Land (Studio 13,2018)
10 Okzharp & Manthe Ribane - Closer Apart (2018, Hyperdub)
11 Arctic Monkeys - Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino (Domino,2018)
12 Audiobooks - Now! (in a minute) (Heavenly,2018)
13 Low - Double Negative (Sub Pop,2018)
14 Unknown Mortal Orchestra - Sex & Food (Jagjaguwar,2018)
15 U.S. Girls - In a Poem Unlimited [4AD,2018]
16 John Maus - Addendum (Ribbon Music,2018)
17 The Goon Sax - We're Not Talking (Wichita,2018)
18 Cabbage - Nihilistic Glamour Shots (BMG,2018)
19 Yves Tumor - Safe In The Hands of Love (WARP,2018)
20 Leon Vynehall - Nothing Is Still [Ninja Tune]
Apr 10, 2018
April 2018...
Unknown Mortal Orchestra - Sex & Food (2018)
Goat Girl - Goat Girl (2018)
The Voidz - Virtue (2018)
Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever - 'French Press' EP (Release Date: March 10, 2017)
U.S. Girls - In a Poem Unlimited [2018]
Goat Girl - Goat Girl (2018)
The Voidz - Virtue (2018)
Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever - 'French Press' EP (Release Date: March 10, 2017)
U.S. Girls - In a Poem Unlimited [2018]
Mar 31, 2018
Of Montreal...live
Of Montreal performs "Paranoiac Intervals/Body Dysmorphia" from their new album "White Is Relic/Irrealis Mood."
Cabbage - Nihilistic Glamour Shots (2018)
The result of three EPs, over 200 shows and a developing penchant for the hostile and the perverse, Nihilistic Glamour Shots is Cabbage’s
debut full-length, if not their introduction to the world. The Mossley
five-piece have nurtured their dark, industrial post-punk with a
typically Northern grit and humour, and the result is exhilarating.
Dominated by anthemic choruses railing against a range of
establishments and supposed norms, whether it be social responsibility
(‘’Arms of Pleonexia’’), health (‘’Celebration of a Disease’’) or
symbolic public events (‘’Reptiles State Funeral’’), Cabbage
find their voices (shared between co-vocalists Lee Broadbent and Joe
Martin) in questioning convention. This perspective isn’t only visible
in their attacks; ‘’Perdurabo’’ delves into the life of Aleister Crowley
and the occult, whereas ‘’Obligatory Castration’’ presents a time in
the future where everyone from the Pope and doctors are subject to the
chop.
This fascination with the damned is enforced with a fevered breadth of styles, from classic punk, such as on the opener ‘’Preach to the Converted’’, to dashes of post-punk, indie-punk and Parquet Courts/Fat White Family-esque garage (‘’Exhibit A’’). The result is a fascinating concoction of menace and intrigue. The odd mishap, such as the extended ending to ‘’Exhibit A’’, leaves a little to be desired, though by and large Cabbage produces a sound that marries the hostility on show beautifully.
Not as mourning as the drunken howls of Iceage and more biting than Shame’s riling observations, Nihilistic Glamour Shots is a disturbing and wholly invigorating release. It's a testament to a fascination with the corrupt and the abnormal.
This fascination with the damned is enforced with a fevered breadth of styles, from classic punk, such as on the opener ‘’Preach to the Converted’’, to dashes of post-punk, indie-punk and Parquet Courts/Fat White Family-esque garage (‘’Exhibit A’’). The result is a fascinating concoction of menace and intrigue. The odd mishap, such as the extended ending to ‘’Exhibit A’’, leaves a little to be desired, though by and large Cabbage produces a sound that marries the hostility on show beautifully.
Not as mourning as the drunken howls of Iceage and more biting than Shame’s riling observations, Nihilistic Glamour Shots is a disturbing and wholly invigorating release. It's a testament to a fascination with the corrupt and the abnormal.
Mar 13, 2018
Felt
FELT - Crumbling the Antiseptic Beauty 1981
Ahead of
the upcoming 2018 reissues of the first five Felt albums, I take a look
back at the whole of the band’s remarkable output, including albums,
singles and compilations.
Ten albums. Ten singles. Ten years.
Now that’s a masterplan, and Felt mainman Lawrence, the singer and songwriter who wished his life could be as strange as a conspiracy, pretty much delivered on his promise and defined 1980’s indie with a remarkable run of glorious music that, once discovered, is difficult to resist.
You just gotta find it, that’s all.
I imagine many after-the-fact Felt fans came to them via their sixth album, 1986’s Forever Breathes the Lonely Word, a stellar collection of guitar/organ pop that was jinglier and janglier than a 4-day-weekend Byrds convention. However, if you were to scan your pop lists/Best Albums of the 80s/critic polls and whatnot, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was the only Felt album worth raving about. When you later discover that there was more – a lot more – to love, you may, like me, wonder how you got on without any of it.
The musical sound of Felt can be preciously delicate, thrillingly melodic, spaciously epic, charmingly ramshackle, unpredictably contrary and even frustratingly wayward. As well as Lawrence, there were two major creative forces in the band, both of whom were just as essential to their sound, guitarist Maurice Deebank and organist Martin Duffy. Deebank was part of Felt for the first half of their existence, Duffy the second, with only one album out of the ten featuring both of them together. The Deebank and Duffy eras are both unique – the odds are that you may end up pledging allegiance to one over the other, even if you do kinda love both periods to bits. For me, it’s the Deebank years that I truly, truly adore, but the Duffy era is also so very special, so very wonderful indeed.
As for the vocals, well Lawrence has the kind of delivery that’s sometimes a little Tom Verlaine (the band’s name was inspired by his pronunciation of the word in Television’s killer song ‘Venus’), sometimes a little Bob Dylan, sometimes a little Lou Reed, and yet it’s also own thing entirely, a non-macho, non-histrionic and lovably unconventional voice that’s laconic yet heartfelt, and best of all, given that his is not the most soaring or professional of singers, delightfully easy to sing along with! His lyrics could be gorgeously poetic, opaque, allusive, self-deprecating, self-doubting, wryly funny, sad, beautiful and epic. Not bad, eh?
As for Felt’s rhythm section, firstly there was Gary Ainge on drums – he would be the longest serving member of the band outside of Lawrence – if it was a Felt record and it had a beat, he was playing it. Notably, his drums remained cymbal-less for the first few years. It wasn’t until the third album when the percussion lightened up a bit! The role of the bassist was a lot more fluid, with at least six different players taking up the challenge over Felt’s lifetime. We had Nick Gilbert, Mick Lloyd, Marco Thomas, future Lush member Phil King, Mick Bund and Primal Scream’s Robert Young, all of them essential elements of the band’s sound. Sadly, both Micks and Robert Young are no longer with us.
Regarding the music, what’s strange about Felt is that at times their development appears to advance significantly and then at others retreat to an approach so perversely lo-fi that you’d struggle to fit the LPs and singles in chronological sequence if all you had was the music to go by. A later album like The Pictorial Jackson Review and a single like ‘Ballad of the Band’ sound deliberately rough, ready and almost debut-release quality, whereas LPs like The Strange Idols Pattern and Other Short Stories or The Splendour of Fear sound beautifully rich and full of texture. The only thing that makes sense in this band’s chronology is that the very first thing released under the Felt name sounds so primitive that it’s like the cassette demo had already been chewed up and spat out, while the very last thing they released sounds consummately professional. In-between we’re all over the place.
They barely made a dent in the charts. True, their single ‘Primitive Painters’ was a UK Indie Chart #1, but the radio wasn’t listening. Other factors interfered with their potential success, some outside their control (the NME pulling a cover feature at the last minute), some bizarrely at their own hands (deciding to follow their biggest single with a quirky instrumental LP with zero commercial potential), and of course, there were those verbose album titles, but as much as Lawrence did, and still does, desire fame and success, part of Felt’s appeal lies in their obscurity. They are a buried treasure, a lost find, a beloved cult band. Of course, it would have been nice for the band to have actually sold albums so that they could pay the rent with more ease, but it wasn’t to be. What follows is an album-by-album breakdown of their ten year lifetime, as well as the compilations which gathered various singles and B-sides.
Not really the First Single: ‘Index’
This is about as rough and low-budget a single as you’re ever likely to hear. Upon first listen both sides (the B-side is named ‘Break It’) sound like an unholy racket. Upon second listen they still sound like an unholy racket. If you’re willing to give them time, and I can understand why you wouldn’t, then something barely resembling a melody lies underneath these ‘songs’. Hilariously, ‘Index’ was included on the Absolute Classic Masterpieces compilation, though politely it was tucked away at the very end. Sounds magazine gave it the ‘Single of the Week’ award though, in what I imagine must have been act of wilful perversity. By the way, these are solo recordings before the ‘band’ Felt were formed.
The Proper First Single: ‘Something Sends Me to Sleep’
This is a remarkable step forward – the fuzziness of their debut now has an added beat, a recognisable vocal and a loping, sexy, hypnotic melody that I read somewhere was essentially ‘Index’ but with all the feedback and static removed. You know, as though ‘Index’ was the slab of marble and this is the beautiful sculpture that was always there inside. It’s not quite commercial, but it is totally beguiling. This is also the first time we have Lawrence singing. What he’s singing about is another matter entirely. Another version can be found on the B-side which features the kind of galloping drums that were a big element of the first two albums. The other flipside is the brief instrumental ‘Red Indians’, which would be re-recorded with slightly better results for the second album. This early take is well worth your time though.
The First Album: Crumbling the Antiseptic Beauty
Felt’s full-length debut is small yet epic, intimate yet sprawling. It sounds like it was made for little money and yet it sounds spectacularly ambitious and wholly successful as an attempt to create something unique, elemental and otherworldly. It is an album that stretches out for miles and yet sometimes feels as though it never leaves the bedroom. Just four people in a room, weaving sounds together, possibilities infinite. It’s one of the most beguiling debuts from any band ever. If they had never done anything else after this, the mystery of this album would have been fascinating. Its place near the beginning of the band’s existence can sometimes serve to underrate it, especially given that the next two albums were even better, but Crumbling… has a special power that’s all its own. It’s difficult to go into detail about what precisely is so appealing about this album. It’s fragile, ebbing and gentle yet strident – it has a beat and it has bass, yet it always seems like it’s going to disappear between your fingers. It’s definitely the most spectral and mysterious of the ten Felt albums.
The production is very light and delicate, whilst Lawrence’s vocals and lyrics are blended into the musical mix so much that it’s sometimes quite difficult to hear what he’s actually singing. I don’t mind this obscuration at all though. After all, I love the Cocteau Twins (with whom Felt would later share the odd collaboration) and that’s what they were all about too. Upon first listen, it might not make a strong impression; it certainly doesn’t have the immediate punch of their later work, but believe me, it’s a real grower. Besides, this isn’t really the sort of thing that grabs you by the collar and demands attention. It exists very happily in its own universe, waiting for you to come along sometime and visit. Once you’re in, you’ll be glad you gave it the time. Interestingly, Felt’s early manifesto was to deliver stand-alone killer pop singles alongside atmospheric, mainly instrumental albums. They’d soon abandon that process, but for the first few years, it made for a fascinating approach, satisfying both their pop and art impulses.
Occasionally, the album becomes surprisingly urgent, like on the edgy, thrilling “I Worship the Sun”. The drums and bass rumble and close in, Lawrence murmur-sings his lyrics, never trying to steal the sunlight from Deebank’s astonishing flourishes of guitar. It fits in with the rest of the album very nicely, but it also has an unrelenting tension that threatens to shatter the track into pieces. Not for nothing does the song become so tightly coiled that it has no choice but to break the spell halfway through, spreading its wings and slowly ebbing away into a shimmering echo….before building up again towards one sudden finish. Deebank’s guitars here ripple like water – quite like The Edge’s stuff from around this time, but more elemental and less tied to the pop format. Hypnotic, utterly, addictively hypnotic.
‘I Worship the Sun’ excepted, Crumbling… is an airy, brisk and spacious experience. The production is a little thin, but I think that contributes to the crystalline, precious sound. The guitars of Lawrence and Deebank are the star of the show, and they sparkle, glimmer and languidly drift through the likes of “Evergreen Dazed” and “Birdmen” in particular. “Fortune” is really lovely, but it would take a re-recorded version later on to elevate it to the level of true classic. This early version is sparser, less grand, one that might seem a little unfinished compared to the later re-recording, but it works wonderfully in the context of this album. Their next LP would take this sound (especially the frisky, galloping rhythms on the last three tracks) and make it even stronger, but this is nevertheless a special, unique debut….maybe not the most ideal introduction to this most wonderful of bands, but one definitely worth getting if you love their next two albums in particular…
The Second Single: ‘My Face is on Fire’
‘My Face is on Fire’ (great title) introduces Felt’s love of the Spanish guitar to their sound, but Lawrence obviously wasn’t that keen on the song given that it was re-recorded for the third album and when it came to selecting highlights for Absolute Classic Masterpieces, they chose the B-side over this! Speaking of that flipside, ‘Trails of Colour Dissolve’ shares a lot of its big brother’s DNA. They’re both sprightly, claustrophobic and passionate pop gems, edging the band closer to a radio-friendly sound. It wasn’t a hit at all, but the lo-fi approach meant that its obscurity was understandable. The failure of the next single was less justified however…
The Third Single: ‘Penelope Tree’
Holy shit.
Despite the melodic appeal of ‘Something Sends Me to Sleep’ and ‘My Face is on Fire’, this is the first genuinely legitimate perfect pop song Felt gave us. I can even imagine being played on the radio! It’s about as excellent as your killer three-minute pop charge gets. The sound of Crumbling… is left to… well, crumble, right from the opening guitar siren (as cute and as mischievous as a kitty-cat), which immediately ducks for cover in the shadow of a stunning Lawrence tour de force that doesn’t let up for a second. It was created when Deebank had temporarily left the band, so the composition is all Lawrence, although I cannot ignore the stellar band performance – a brilliant, brilliant rhythm section on this one. The urgency of the acoustic guitar carries us through the verses, but then a magnificently exciting electric flourish in the bridge takes it all into the stratosphere. Hooks, flourishes, heart-stopping moments from start to finish.
The B-sides on the flip are a couple of utterly beautiful instrumentals – further down the line ‘A Preacher in New England’ and ‘Now Summer’s Spread Its Wings Again’ would be melded into one piece and released simply as ‘A Preacher in New England’ for The Splendour of Fear, but here is how it sounded originally. The production is less all-enveloping, somewhere in-between the thinner sound of Crumbling… and the full-fat widescreen of Splendour. Also, the melody on ‘Now Summer’s Spread Its Wings Again’, whilst initially resembling the later version, blossoms into its own uniquely delicate tune for a while before returning to theme more familiar to fans of Splendour. The 12″ of ‘Penelope Tree’ is the way to go, as the 7″ only features ‘A Preacher in New England’ and frankly, that’s not enough.
The Second Album: The Splendour of Fear
Terrifically dark, atmospheric and lusciously romantic, this is a short LP, just clocking in at over half-an-hour, but damn it if I don’t love it for its brevity. Six tracks, and only two featuring vocals (and even one of them ditches the vocals pretty early on), it is one of the best examples of less being more. It’s a wonderfully exquisite, perfect creation, and it’s all about one mood, and one mood only. What that mood is exactly is quite difficult to pinpoint, but I guess you could call it a kind of moody, cinematic, romantic melancholia? It plays out like the long-lost score to some long-lost Western-noir, its emphasis on instrumentation over lyrics permitting you to let your imagination run riot over the epic vistas hinted at throughout. The front cover directly uses the poster for Andy Warhol’s film Chelsea Girls, but to be honest it’s the cover for The Strange Idols Pattern and Other Short Stories which feels like a more appropriate image for this album’s contents. Ancient, elemental, mysterious. Prepare to be seduced.
The opening track, ‘Red Indians’ feels like an overture, as though opening credits could be playing along with it, a scene where horses and their riders are coming into town. You can practically smell the dust from the plains seeping through the speakers. The drums rumble, the bass trembles and the guitar fills the air languidly but at the same time stridently allows the picture to widen and widen until before you is a full plain vista. It’s moody, magnificent and so far away from what you’d expect from that kind of low-budget 80’s indie. The only ‘proper’ song follows, the gorgeous ‘The World is Soft as Lace’, and it’s one of the most delightfully romantic, dreamy songs of the 80’s, embellished by Deebank’s delightful, sensual guitar hook which might be the textbook definition of `sparkling’. Two huge instrumentals dominate proceedings. Lawrence’s “The Optimist and the Poet” stretches out forever, and I wouldn’t want it any other way….this is real widescreen music, panoramic in scope yet not in the slightest bit bloated or extraneous….just close your eyes and fall deep into the visions created here. The same goes for “The Stagnant Pool”, which remains a fan favourite, and it’s easy to see why; it’s like swimming at night, bathed in moonlight.
‘Mexican Bandits’ kicks off Side 2 in much the same way as ‘Red Indians’ did for Side 1, but it’s longer, more forceful and really quite thrilling. It makes me want to get on a horse and ride into town just like its title characters. Deebank conjures up an insistent jangle-riff that gets under your skin. The final track is one of the most haunting yet eventually glorious pieces of music you may ever hear. As previously mentioned, this was originally split up into two tracks on the B-side of the ‘Penelope Tree’ 12”, and the Fear re-recording brings its beautiful melodies and atmospherics up-to-date. The first half is so utterly, eerily dreamy and intoxicatingly sad that it does more for glamourising melancholia than most bands could ever dream of, and the reason for that is that there’s something mysteriously sensual and intimate about the spell it weaves. Then, suddenly, the sun breaks through the clouds and what’s this? Honestly, what follows is one of the most wonderful stretches of music you’ll ever hear, and Deebank confirms his status as One of the Gods, truly one of the best guitarists ever, with melodies spinning off into thrilling, delicate crescendos and all of a sudden everything so, so utterly, utterly right with the world. Deebank’s obscurity is to me utterly heartbreaking, for the man was a genius, and he should be praised far more than he is.
The Fourth Single: ‘Mexican Bandits’
No unique tracks to this single, so let’s move on.
The Fifth Single: ‘Sunlight Bathed the Golden Glow’
We get a single-ready take on a dazzling future album track which here has its moments, but is somewhat overcooked. Whereas the later take has a simple, irresistible charm, the single take throws in ripe strings and some badly misjudged female backing vocals that frankly make it all a bit of mess, but not the kind of giddying, often thrilling mess that the overloaded Ignite the Seven Cannons would be. The only appealing difference is the fantastic intro, which starts off with just the bass and then a killer guitar and drum hook. There’s an instrumental version called ‘Sunlight Strings’ on the flip that emphasises the strings and is a lot less cluttered. In fact, it’s quite fantastic, letting the orchestration breathe a lot more, giving it the kind of grandeur the Bunnymen achieved on their tremendous Ocean Rain album from the same year.
The band’s biggest hit, a UK Independent Chart #1 (didn’t crack the regular charts, sadly) and a bona fide collaboration with two of the Cocteau Twins, this is an epic, six-minute whirlwind of wonder. The producer was Robin Guthrie, whose distinctive approach made the Cocteaus one of the most addictive, multi-coloured, tactile and sensual bands of the Eighties – there are those who balked at what he did with Felt, that he added too many layers and made everything a mess in the process, but I love what he did. If Felt were a more commercial prospect, an album like Ignite the Seven Cannons might have warranted a deluxe edition and the thing could have been given some kind of de-Guthrie-isation that would strip it of all of its excesses and we could have been treated to an alternate version, but I say stick with what we’ve got. Besides, one thing that I think all of us Felt fans are in agreement with is that ‘Primitive Painters’ is a total success. Their most anthemic song, notable for the presence of Elizabeth Fraser, who joins Lawrence on the awesome chorus and pretty much from the half-way point onwards as the song begins its long finale. It’s a beautiful thing, going round and round and working its way to an ecstatic headrush. A six minute swim in luscious waters, `Primitive Painters’ is a euphoric, shimmering and very atmospheric masterpiece of 1980’s indie pop which still sounds magnificent to this day. For the first and last time, Felt sound truly collaborative, stepping outside of their world and into a bigger one, and for a moment it was glorious.
The B-side is a reworking of ‘Cathedral’ from their first album. There’s more oomph this time, notably with the drums. You could argue that it’s a bit pointless, and the fragility of the original has been vanquished, but I like to think that it was a nice in-road to their earlier material for those who had just got into this band. After all, ‘Primitive Painters’ was likely to be a lot of people’s introduction to Felt.
The Fourth Album: Ignite the Seven Cannons
In theory this should be the greatest Felt album of all.
Okay, bear with me.
Imagine recommending a perfect Felt album, one that perfectly encapsulates all that is great about the band. It isn’t easy, because the later ones feel incomplete without Deebank, just like the earlier ones feel incomplete without Duffy. Yet here we have an album that has both of them on it – the only one of the ten – and yet it’s all too much. Actually, that’s not because of something like Deebank and Duffy fighting for space or whatnot. The reason Ignite feels so cluttered is that the production by Cocteau Twin Robin Guthrie is fucking crazy. Everything merges in classic early Cocteaus-era style and it’s totally overwhelming, overripe and immense. Oddly enough, the album is relatively normal if you listen to it at a reasonably quiet level, but who would want to do that? Anyway, despite all of that, the reason Ignite is not the greatest Felt album is because it’s so structurally unbalanced. The first side is frankly perfect, one of the greatest sides of Felt vinyl you’re likely to hear. The second is just good. Good, but not good enough.
‘My Darkest Light Will Shine’ is another classic Felt scene-setter and almost self-aware-Lawrence is ‘back’, in case you didn’t notice! the production is overdone to the point where it almost becomes woozy listening, but oddly enough that’s part of its appeal. Given that the full title of this LP is Ignite the Seven Cannons and Set Sail for the Sun, there’s an appropriately nautical, oceanic and wavy ambience to the songs. Listen to it at the wrong time and you may feel a little sea sick, but at the right time it’s delightfully dreamy. ‘The Day the Rain Came Down’ begins with such insanely ecstatic ascending guitar that you may very well burst out laughing at the sheer giddy joy of it all. Of course, it’s not just the guitar. The bass and the drums keep it all going, and Duffy’s keyboards are a constant wellspring of warmth. I absolutely adore this song. It’s short, relentless, utterly thrilling and definitely in my top ten Felt songs. ‘Scarlet Servants’ is a nice respite after such high-velocity pop. Deebank and Duffy are beautifully matched. ‘I Don’t Know Which Way to Turn’ is brilliantly melodic, especially during the magnificent chorus, where everything just clicks wonderfully. The lyrics are some of the most revealing Lawrence would deliver – a line like ‘when I’m up there on the stage/I just hide my head and hope and pray that soon enough the show will end/why do I go through this hell?’. From someone who seemingly craved stardom, this is a shocking confession. The album’s centrepiece, in fact Felt’s own musical centrepiece, is ‘Primitive Painters’, and I’ve already discussed that, so let’s move on. On to the second side.
This is the one Felt album that we can all agree on. It’s an absolute gem. It’s not the be-all, end-all Felt album though. I mean, it doesn’t have Deebank on it, and Felt without Deebank is incomplete, just as Felt without Duffy is incomplete. Now that would make you think that Ignite the Seven Cannons is a complete Felt record, but it isn’t, as I’ve already mentioned. Forever Breathes is still a fucking magnificent, wonderful thing nonetheless. It was the first Felt album I ever heard, and at first I was shocked at how prevalent the organ was on it. In fact, I wasn’t sure how to respond to it. That organ sounded a little, well chintzy, I suppose? A bit too bargain basement? People would level a smiliar ‘charity shop’ keyboard ambience towards Candida Doyle’s playing on Pulp’s records, but I never had a problem with that. In fact, I loved it. However, Duffy’s insistent organ-playing on this record threatened to irritate me. I got over it.
The album also marked a return to traditional songs after the delightful instrumental interludes of the previous album; Duffy well and truly proves his worth as a fine replacement for Deebank, delivering jaunty, wonderful keyboard lines over Lawrence’s jingliest and jangliest of guitars. Thos guitars are also as warm and welcoming as a beacon’s light, sometimes as crisp as autumn leaves. That voice of his still isn’t technically amazing, but Lawrence has real character and personality to his vocals, and he knows how to use what he has got to wonderful effect; I’ll take that over your textbook `talented’ voices any day of the week. His chemistry with Duffy on this album was never bettered, before or since.
“Rain of Crystal Spires” is a terrific opener; the guitars glisten and sparkle and contribute to one of the brightest melodies the band ever created; of all the songs Felt made in their post-Deebank years, this one’s the absolute best. No wonder it was selected as a single, which was quite a rarity for a band who preferred to keep their albums and singles as separate entities; still, just one listen to this absolute gem of a song and you can see why it was given A-side status. Almost as good is the buoyant “Down But Not Yet Out” which crackles with energy and heavenly music from start to finish; to be honest, there’s an identical, memorable guitar hook that’s used in both of these opening songs, as well as “Grey Streets”, but the effect isn’t repetitive, as the hook in question is so damn good that it’s worth hearing more than once. The warm, woozy “September Lady” boasts some of the sweetest `aaahhh’ backing vocals, glorious guitars, a swirling, romantic feel….this album is addictive stuff, believe me! “Grey Streets” closes off a more or less faultless first side with countless wonderful moments throughout; one of the fastest paced and infectiously exciting Felt songs around, and that’s a fact.
On the second side, “All the People I Like are Those That are Dead” is appropriately ghostly and atmospheric, boasting the immortal opening couplet of ‘Perhaps I should entertain/The very fact that I’m insane’ while “Gather Up Your Wings and Fly” has some euphoric, thrilling hooks and the wonderful “A Wave Crashed on Rocks” is one of the band’s best ballads, truly heart-stopping and breathtakingly elegant. The closing “Hours of Darkness Have Changed My Mind” is probably the least memorable thing here, but it still flows by very pleasantly indeed.
It’s this album that stands as Lawrence’s strongest argument that the band could be just as vital without Deebank. He’s not missed on this album.
The Seventh Single: ‘Rain of Crystal Spires’
As previously mentioned, the album track ‘Rain of Crystal Spires’ was released as a single, backed with fellow Forever Breathes song ‘Gather Up Your Wings and Fly’ and two new B-sides. ‘I Will Die with my Head in Flames’ and ‘The Sandman’s on the Rise Again’ are essential, snappy and brief blasts of rocket-fuelled power pop. Taken together, the two songs barely make it past the three minute mark. They would have been too fast and frenzied to be included on Forever Breathes, although in terms of quality, they are easily the equal of anything on that album. Lawrence’s guitar can barely contain itself on ‘Sandman’, Duffy sounds wired on ‘Flames’. Excellent songs.
The Seventh Album: Poem of the River
“I will be the first person in history to die of boredom” is a great opening line for an album. “And I will have as my epitaph the second line of `Black Ship in the Harbour'” is a cheeky follow-up. By the way, that `second line`, taken from the band’s Ignite the Seven Cannons album, is “I was a moment that quickly passed”. It’s a striking beginning to the autumnal Poem of the River, which continues to build on the new-found musical partnership between Lawrence and Duffy and, despite being slightly not as good as Forever Breathes the Lonely Word, is another work of wonder to add to a canon work that was, frankly, an embarrassment of riches by this stage.
The mood here is alternately romantic, rough, sweet and laid-back, with two epic songs – “She Lives By the Castle” and “Riding on the Equator” – dominating proceedings in terms of length. The former, rumoured to be about future Saint Etienne singer Sarah Cracknell, is a real beauty; if only it didn’t go on just that little bit too long with its extended organ solo at the end, we’d be talking one of the top ten Felt songs. Still, for the first four minutes, it’s one of the most delicate, sweetest things created by this band, and Lawrence’s vocals and guitars in particular are rather wonderful. “Riding on the Equator” isn’t quite classic Felt, but it slides along prettily and contributes to the album very well. There’s a long guitar solo at the end that might not jump out at you upon first listen, but it’s very sweet indeed! The opening “Declaration”, with its rough, ready and simpler sound, foreshadows the down-to-earth sound of The Pictorial Jackson Review. The lyrics are quite vicious compared to the rest of the album, with its surprising threat of ‘I’ll stab a knife in the face/Of any man who dares to oppose me’ while the stunning, adorable mini-masterpiece that is “Stained-Glass Windows in the Sky” would be just as much of an influence with its short, sharp burst of pop bliss. The latter song in particular encapsulates everything great about the Lawrence/Duffy era of Felt in just over two minutes; it wasn’t a single (although a video was made for it) but it’s peachy, slinky guitar, a beautifully resigned Lawrence vocal and an insistently catchy beat meant it really should have been one. It drifts in and out before you know it, but its fleeting nature is the main reason it works, and I have looped this track over and over many times, I must admit. You’ll feel like taking a ‘jetplane on a highway’ after this one, I hope.
Poem of the River may be the most innocuous, nicest Felt album of them all, barring maybe Let the Snakes… It doesn’t scream for your attention, it just drifts along very nicely in its own slow-burning way. “Silver Plane” is an understated, gentle little ditty that I like more and more every time I hear it, while the closing semi-acoustic “Dark Red Birds” is up there with “A Preacher in New England” as one of the best Felt album closers; haunting, relaxing, poetic and deeply lovely, it just pulls you in and keeps you there. It truly sounds like a cold autumn sunset in November.
A perfect, mellow accompaniment to Forever Breathes the Lonely Word‘s pop-fuelled sparkle, Poem of the River proved that a this stage, Felt could do no wrong.
The Eighth Single: ‘The Final Resting of the Ark
Felt were spoiling us with yet another EP of non-album songs after Poem, and Robin Guthrie was back too. The title track remains the sparsest, most haunting lead-track of any of their non-album releases. Guthrie’s approach is even more scaled down than what he gave us on the Ballad of the Band, all hushed, acoustic, whispered ambience. ‘There’s No Such Thing as Victory’ is even sparser: gentle, melancholic and resigned, if it wasn’t for the golden glow of the production, this song would be even sadder than it already was.
Ten albums. Ten singles. Ten years.
Now that’s a masterplan, and Felt mainman Lawrence, the singer and songwriter who wished his life could be as strange as a conspiracy, pretty much delivered on his promise and defined 1980’s indie with a remarkable run of glorious music that, once discovered, is difficult to resist.
You just gotta find it, that’s all.
I imagine many after-the-fact Felt fans came to them via their sixth album, 1986’s Forever Breathes the Lonely Word, a stellar collection of guitar/organ pop that was jinglier and janglier than a 4-day-weekend Byrds convention. However, if you were to scan your pop lists/Best Albums of the 80s/critic polls and whatnot, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was the only Felt album worth raving about. When you later discover that there was more – a lot more – to love, you may, like me, wonder how you got on without any of it.
The musical sound of Felt can be preciously delicate, thrillingly melodic, spaciously epic, charmingly ramshackle, unpredictably contrary and even frustratingly wayward. As well as Lawrence, there were two major creative forces in the band, both of whom were just as essential to their sound, guitarist Maurice Deebank and organist Martin Duffy. Deebank was part of Felt for the first half of their existence, Duffy the second, with only one album out of the ten featuring both of them together. The Deebank and Duffy eras are both unique – the odds are that you may end up pledging allegiance to one over the other, even if you do kinda love both periods to bits. For me, it’s the Deebank years that I truly, truly adore, but the Duffy era is also so very special, so very wonderful indeed.
As for the vocals, well Lawrence has the kind of delivery that’s sometimes a little Tom Verlaine (the band’s name was inspired by his pronunciation of the word in Television’s killer song ‘Venus’), sometimes a little Bob Dylan, sometimes a little Lou Reed, and yet it’s also own thing entirely, a non-macho, non-histrionic and lovably unconventional voice that’s laconic yet heartfelt, and best of all, given that his is not the most soaring or professional of singers, delightfully easy to sing along with! His lyrics could be gorgeously poetic, opaque, allusive, self-deprecating, self-doubting, wryly funny, sad, beautiful and epic. Not bad, eh?
As for Felt’s rhythm section, firstly there was Gary Ainge on drums – he would be the longest serving member of the band outside of Lawrence – if it was a Felt record and it had a beat, he was playing it. Notably, his drums remained cymbal-less for the first few years. It wasn’t until the third album when the percussion lightened up a bit! The role of the bassist was a lot more fluid, with at least six different players taking up the challenge over Felt’s lifetime. We had Nick Gilbert, Mick Lloyd, Marco Thomas, future Lush member Phil King, Mick Bund and Primal Scream’s Robert Young, all of them essential elements of the band’s sound. Sadly, both Micks and Robert Young are no longer with us.
Regarding the music, what’s strange about Felt is that at times their development appears to advance significantly and then at others retreat to an approach so perversely lo-fi that you’d struggle to fit the LPs and singles in chronological sequence if all you had was the music to go by. A later album like The Pictorial Jackson Review and a single like ‘Ballad of the Band’ sound deliberately rough, ready and almost debut-release quality, whereas LPs like The Strange Idols Pattern and Other Short Stories or The Splendour of Fear sound beautifully rich and full of texture. The only thing that makes sense in this band’s chronology is that the very first thing released under the Felt name sounds so primitive that it’s like the cassette demo had already been chewed up and spat out, while the very last thing they released sounds consummately professional. In-between we’re all over the place.
They barely made a dent in the charts. True, their single ‘Primitive Painters’ was a UK Indie Chart #1, but the radio wasn’t listening. Other factors interfered with their potential success, some outside their control (the NME pulling a cover feature at the last minute), some bizarrely at their own hands (deciding to follow their biggest single with a quirky instrumental LP with zero commercial potential), and of course, there were those verbose album titles, but as much as Lawrence did, and still does, desire fame and success, part of Felt’s appeal lies in their obscurity. They are a buried treasure, a lost find, a beloved cult band. Of course, it would have been nice for the band to have actually sold albums so that they could pay the rent with more ease, but it wasn’t to be. What follows is an album-by-album breakdown of their ten year lifetime, as well as the compilations which gathered various singles and B-sides.
Not really the First Single: ‘Index’
This is about as rough and low-budget a single as you’re ever likely to hear. Upon first listen both sides (the B-side is named ‘Break It’) sound like an unholy racket. Upon second listen they still sound like an unholy racket. If you’re willing to give them time, and I can understand why you wouldn’t, then something barely resembling a melody lies underneath these ‘songs’. Hilariously, ‘Index’ was included on the Absolute Classic Masterpieces compilation, though politely it was tucked away at the very end. Sounds magazine gave it the ‘Single of the Week’ award though, in what I imagine must have been act of wilful perversity. By the way, these are solo recordings before the ‘band’ Felt were formed.
The Proper First Single: ‘Something Sends Me to Sleep’
This is a remarkable step forward – the fuzziness of their debut now has an added beat, a recognisable vocal and a loping, sexy, hypnotic melody that I read somewhere was essentially ‘Index’ but with all the feedback and static removed. You know, as though ‘Index’ was the slab of marble and this is the beautiful sculpture that was always there inside. It’s not quite commercial, but it is totally beguiling. This is also the first time we have Lawrence singing. What he’s singing about is another matter entirely. Another version can be found on the B-side which features the kind of galloping drums that were a big element of the first two albums. The other flipside is the brief instrumental ‘Red Indians’, which would be re-recorded with slightly better results for the second album. This early take is well worth your time though.
The First Album: Crumbling the Antiseptic Beauty
Felt’s full-length debut is small yet epic, intimate yet sprawling. It sounds like it was made for little money and yet it sounds spectacularly ambitious and wholly successful as an attempt to create something unique, elemental and otherworldly. It is an album that stretches out for miles and yet sometimes feels as though it never leaves the bedroom. Just four people in a room, weaving sounds together, possibilities infinite. It’s one of the most beguiling debuts from any band ever. If they had never done anything else after this, the mystery of this album would have been fascinating. Its place near the beginning of the band’s existence can sometimes serve to underrate it, especially given that the next two albums were even better, but Crumbling… has a special power that’s all its own. It’s difficult to go into detail about what precisely is so appealing about this album. It’s fragile, ebbing and gentle yet strident – it has a beat and it has bass, yet it always seems like it’s going to disappear between your fingers. It’s definitely the most spectral and mysterious of the ten Felt albums.
The production is very light and delicate, whilst Lawrence’s vocals and lyrics are blended into the musical mix so much that it’s sometimes quite difficult to hear what he’s actually singing. I don’t mind this obscuration at all though. After all, I love the Cocteau Twins (with whom Felt would later share the odd collaboration) and that’s what they were all about too. Upon first listen, it might not make a strong impression; it certainly doesn’t have the immediate punch of their later work, but believe me, it’s a real grower. Besides, this isn’t really the sort of thing that grabs you by the collar and demands attention. It exists very happily in its own universe, waiting for you to come along sometime and visit. Once you’re in, you’ll be glad you gave it the time. Interestingly, Felt’s early manifesto was to deliver stand-alone killer pop singles alongside atmospheric, mainly instrumental albums. They’d soon abandon that process, but for the first few years, it made for a fascinating approach, satisfying both their pop and art impulses.
Occasionally, the album becomes surprisingly urgent, like on the edgy, thrilling “I Worship the Sun”. The drums and bass rumble and close in, Lawrence murmur-sings his lyrics, never trying to steal the sunlight from Deebank’s astonishing flourishes of guitar. It fits in with the rest of the album very nicely, but it also has an unrelenting tension that threatens to shatter the track into pieces. Not for nothing does the song become so tightly coiled that it has no choice but to break the spell halfway through, spreading its wings and slowly ebbing away into a shimmering echo….before building up again towards one sudden finish. Deebank’s guitars here ripple like water – quite like The Edge’s stuff from around this time, but more elemental and less tied to the pop format. Hypnotic, utterly, addictively hypnotic.
‘I Worship the Sun’ excepted, Crumbling… is an airy, brisk and spacious experience. The production is a little thin, but I think that contributes to the crystalline, precious sound. The guitars of Lawrence and Deebank are the star of the show, and they sparkle, glimmer and languidly drift through the likes of “Evergreen Dazed” and “Birdmen” in particular. “Fortune” is really lovely, but it would take a re-recorded version later on to elevate it to the level of true classic. This early version is sparser, less grand, one that might seem a little unfinished compared to the later re-recording, but it works wonderfully in the context of this album. Their next LP would take this sound (especially the frisky, galloping rhythms on the last three tracks) and make it even stronger, but this is nevertheless a special, unique debut….maybe not the most ideal introduction to this most wonderful of bands, but one definitely worth getting if you love their next two albums in particular…
The Second Single: ‘My Face is on Fire’
‘My Face is on Fire’ (great title) introduces Felt’s love of the Spanish guitar to their sound, but Lawrence obviously wasn’t that keen on the song given that it was re-recorded for the third album and when it came to selecting highlights for Absolute Classic Masterpieces, they chose the B-side over this! Speaking of that flipside, ‘Trails of Colour Dissolve’ shares a lot of its big brother’s DNA. They’re both sprightly, claustrophobic and passionate pop gems, edging the band closer to a radio-friendly sound. It wasn’t a hit at all, but the lo-fi approach meant that its obscurity was understandable. The failure of the next single was less justified however…
The Third Single: ‘Penelope Tree’
Holy shit.
Despite the melodic appeal of ‘Something Sends Me to Sleep’ and ‘My Face is on Fire’, this is the first genuinely legitimate perfect pop song Felt gave us. I can even imagine being played on the radio! It’s about as excellent as your killer three-minute pop charge gets. The sound of Crumbling… is left to… well, crumble, right from the opening guitar siren (as cute and as mischievous as a kitty-cat), which immediately ducks for cover in the shadow of a stunning Lawrence tour de force that doesn’t let up for a second. It was created when Deebank had temporarily left the band, so the composition is all Lawrence, although I cannot ignore the stellar band performance – a brilliant, brilliant rhythm section on this one. The urgency of the acoustic guitar carries us through the verses, but then a magnificently exciting electric flourish in the bridge takes it all into the stratosphere. Hooks, flourishes, heart-stopping moments from start to finish.
The B-sides on the flip are a couple of utterly beautiful instrumentals – further down the line ‘A Preacher in New England’ and ‘Now Summer’s Spread Its Wings Again’ would be melded into one piece and released simply as ‘A Preacher in New England’ for The Splendour of Fear, but here is how it sounded originally. The production is less all-enveloping, somewhere in-between the thinner sound of Crumbling… and the full-fat widescreen of Splendour. Also, the melody on ‘Now Summer’s Spread Its Wings Again’, whilst initially resembling the later version, blossoms into its own uniquely delicate tune for a while before returning to theme more familiar to fans of Splendour. The 12″ of ‘Penelope Tree’ is the way to go, as the 7″ only features ‘A Preacher in New England’ and frankly, that’s not enough.
The Second Album: The Splendour of Fear
Terrifically dark, atmospheric and lusciously romantic, this is a short LP, just clocking in at over half-an-hour, but damn it if I don’t love it for its brevity. Six tracks, and only two featuring vocals (and even one of them ditches the vocals pretty early on), it is one of the best examples of less being more. It’s a wonderfully exquisite, perfect creation, and it’s all about one mood, and one mood only. What that mood is exactly is quite difficult to pinpoint, but I guess you could call it a kind of moody, cinematic, romantic melancholia? It plays out like the long-lost score to some long-lost Western-noir, its emphasis on instrumentation over lyrics permitting you to let your imagination run riot over the epic vistas hinted at throughout. The front cover directly uses the poster for Andy Warhol’s film Chelsea Girls, but to be honest it’s the cover for The Strange Idols Pattern and Other Short Stories which feels like a more appropriate image for this album’s contents. Ancient, elemental, mysterious. Prepare to be seduced.
The opening track, ‘Red Indians’ feels like an overture, as though opening credits could be playing along with it, a scene where horses and their riders are coming into town. You can practically smell the dust from the plains seeping through the speakers. The drums rumble, the bass trembles and the guitar fills the air languidly but at the same time stridently allows the picture to widen and widen until before you is a full plain vista. It’s moody, magnificent and so far away from what you’d expect from that kind of low-budget 80’s indie. The only ‘proper’ song follows, the gorgeous ‘The World is Soft as Lace’, and it’s one of the most delightfully romantic, dreamy songs of the 80’s, embellished by Deebank’s delightful, sensual guitar hook which might be the textbook definition of `sparkling’. Two huge instrumentals dominate proceedings. Lawrence’s “The Optimist and the Poet” stretches out forever, and I wouldn’t want it any other way….this is real widescreen music, panoramic in scope yet not in the slightest bit bloated or extraneous….just close your eyes and fall deep into the visions created here. The same goes for “The Stagnant Pool”, which remains a fan favourite, and it’s easy to see why; it’s like swimming at night, bathed in moonlight.
‘Mexican Bandits’ kicks off Side 2 in much the same way as ‘Red Indians’ did for Side 1, but it’s longer, more forceful and really quite thrilling. It makes me want to get on a horse and ride into town just like its title characters. Deebank conjures up an insistent jangle-riff that gets under your skin. The final track is one of the most haunting yet eventually glorious pieces of music you may ever hear. As previously mentioned, this was originally split up into two tracks on the B-side of the ‘Penelope Tree’ 12”, and the Fear re-recording brings its beautiful melodies and atmospherics up-to-date. The first half is so utterly, eerily dreamy and intoxicatingly sad that it does more for glamourising melancholia than most bands could ever dream of, and the reason for that is that there’s something mysteriously sensual and intimate about the spell it weaves. Then, suddenly, the sun breaks through the clouds and what’s this? Honestly, what follows is one of the most wonderful stretches of music you’ll ever hear, and Deebank confirms his status as One of the Gods, truly one of the best guitarists ever, with melodies spinning off into thrilling, delicate crescendos and all of a sudden everything so, so utterly, utterly right with the world. Deebank’s obscurity is to me utterly heartbreaking, for the man was a genius, and he should be praised far more than he is.
The Fourth Single: ‘Mexican Bandits’
No unique tracks to this single, so let’s move on.
The Fifth Single: ‘Sunlight Bathed the Golden Glow’
We get a single-ready take on a dazzling future album track which here has its moments, but is somewhat overcooked. Whereas the later take has a simple, irresistible charm, the single take throws in ripe strings and some badly misjudged female backing vocals that frankly make it all a bit of mess, but not the kind of giddying, often thrilling mess that the overloaded Ignite the Seven Cannons would be. The only appealing difference is the fantastic intro, which starts off with just the bass and then a killer guitar and drum hook. There’s an instrumental version called ‘Sunlight Strings’ on the flip that emphasises the strings and is a lot less cluttered. In fact, it’s quite fantastic, letting the orchestration breathe a lot more, giving it the kind of grandeur the Bunnymen achieved on their tremendous Ocean Rain album from the same year.
However, even better than ‘Sunlight Strings’ is the other B-side,
and when I say ‘even better’, I mean ‘so much better than it’s even
better than the very best Felt and could be the greatest damn thing they
ever gave us’. Yep, that good. I’m talking about the re-recording of
‘Fortune’. Originally a delicate, pretty song on the debut album, now a
fully-fleshed, achingly lovely thing of utter, mesmerising beauty, the
new ‘Fortune’ boasts one of the most gloriously luscious guitar lines in
all of pop. Evocative of sultry summer evenings and dreamy sunsets and
exuding a truly sexy, luscious atmosphere, I’d say the song boasts
Deebank’s most beautiful guitar playing. It’s definitely home to
Lawrence’s most haunting vocal. This song is sensual, sad, seductive,
sparkling and so ridiculously sweet that if I was pushed to recommend a
single song to turn a complete stranger to Felt on to their music, then
I’d go with this one. Yep, even more than ‘Primitive Painters’, more
than ‘The World is Soft as Lace’, more than anything from Forever Breathes the Lonely Word. It’s better than almost anything else I’ve ever heard in modern music….it’s a song to fall in love to, and with.
Back to ‘Sunlight’ though – there’s an alternative take of it out there that keep the cool intro but ditches the strings and backing vocals and ends up a little closer to the album version but is still different enough to make it a true alternate version. In fact, my ideal 12″ would have been to have ‘Fortune’ as the A-side and this sparser take of ‘Sunlight’ and ‘Sunlight Strings’ as the B-sides. But that’s the occasionally frustrating world of Felt for you. Doesn’t always go the way you want.
The Third Album: The Strange Idols Pattern and Other Short Stories
Okay, let me take a deep breath….and here we go.
What an album.
When one discovers the wonders of this LP, it’s like discovering buried treasure….and it’s yours, all yours! The later Forever Breathes the Lonely Word is rightfully applauded as a melodic classic, but this is at the very least its equal. Actually, I think I like it more. Its obscurity in the pop world is maddening. I mean, the likes of ‘Spanish House’, ‘Roman Litter’ and ‘Dismantled King is Off the Throne’ are hidden gems of astounding quality and beauty and the thing is, they could have been hits! They are examples of what I rate as “perfect songs”, in that every single second of each is a total delight; they have killer melodies, great lyrics, and that indescribable magic when a band just play off each other and create a swirling rush of a tune. Of course, the rhythm section is unbeatable, but the real stars are Lawrence and Deebank, who both weave spellbinding textures, sounds and feelings from their chemistry together; Deebank delivers a spectacular array of delectable melodies, while Lawrence’s wonderfully languid vocals and clever, witty lyrics are showcased better than ever before on `Sunlight Bathed the Golden Glow’ and `Crystal Ball’. One of the most overlooked albums of all time, The Strange Idols… is a truly, maddeningly delightful experience.
Let’s go back to some of those highlights – ‘Roman Litter’ is a terrific opener. It eases you in the LP, takes you by the hand and skips along with its insistent yet easy-going beat. Oh yes, we have cymbals on a Felt record! As soon as you hear this song, you know you’re in good hands. The warmth of the playing, and John Leckie’s production, is bright, bouncy and evidence of Felt’s new willingness to make their albums as accessible as their singles. ‘Sempiternal Darkness’ is a solo instrumental, and one of Deebank’s most precious, glittering moments. It’s beautiful, so pretty, so out-of-time and sad, so elegant. ‘Spanish House’ effortlessly found its way into my top 5 Felt songs of all time as soon as I heard it. It’s stupendously catchy. It gets everything right. I mean, spectacularly right. One listen and I was absolutely sold. As if I needed further evidence that Felt were genius, then this comes along and just wins me over to such an overwhelming degree that I realise that the public and the radio’s loss was our gain. I envy those who have yet to discover this gem. It makes me smile. I hope it does the same for you. I still can’t quite work out what the song’s actually about though. References to ‘galleon seas’ and televisions and whatnot. ‘Imprint’ is a Lawrence solo piece – very lovely indeed, like the rising sun coming through the windows of your bedroom.
The best version of ‘Sunlight Bathed the Golden Glow’ follows – less overdone than the earlier single take, and more in keeping with the sound of the rest of this album. Great lyrics on this one – there’s rarely been a more example of faint praise than ‘I thought your poetry was…. sometimes good’. I’ve mean meaning to read Rimbaud’s A Season in Hell ever since hearing this song, even if I’m afraid I’m not going to know what it’s about. The beautiful ‘Vasco de Gama’ (one of two Felt tracks named after Mexican conquistadors) kicks off the second side – more unfolding melodies that blossom like flowers, really very pretty indeed. Frustratingly, apart from the 1989 release which combined this album with Ignite the Seven Cannons, all CD versions to date omit a Deebank instrumental piece entitled “Crucifix Heaven” which originally followed ‘Vasco de Gama’. It’s a brilliant, Spanish guitar-influenced piece which really does belong back on this album. Why wasn’t it included? Apparently, Lawrence isn’t keen on it; if that’s true, that’s a poor excuse for exclusion! After that we get the incredible ‘Dismantled King is Off the Throne’, which gets 10/10 for that title alone. An absolutely breathless, non-stop rush of melody, this is one song that I really, really, really, really wish had been a hit. To be fair, it wasn’t even released as a single, so I should stop pining, but damn there are few songs as fantastic as this one. It’s remarkably stirring for a song that opens with wondering what’s better: ‘a life of misery or an awful suicide’. ‘Crystal Ball’ mellows things considerably, a glorious thing if ever I heard one. The closing ‘Whirlpool Vision of Shame’ is a re-recording of ‘My Face is on Fire’ and it’s a fine alternative. Neither take is considerably better or worse than the other, though if you can’t get enough of Deebank, then you may find yourself preferring this one.
The Strange Idols.., if it had just been the only album from any given artist, might have been given relatively more attention as a indie masterpiece from a lost artist, but because this is Felt, and whenever Felt is mentioned it’s always ‘Primitive Painters’ and/or Forever Breathes the Lonely Word, it means that this album is getting even less attention than it deserves. I truly think that not only is it Felt’s masterpiece, and not only is one of the best albums of the eighties, it is one of the best albums of all time. Everything clicked on this one, everything seemed bright on this album, everything felt as golden as sunlight’s glow. The band would still remain brilliant, but for me this and ‘Fortune’ are their peaks. If only ‘Fortune’ had been on this album too, then it could have been even better…
PS: The upcoming 2018 CD release will re-instate ‘Crucifix Heaven’, which is great news!
The Sixth Single: ‘Primitive Painters’
Back to ‘Sunlight’ though – there’s an alternative take of it out there that keep the cool intro but ditches the strings and backing vocals and ends up a little closer to the album version but is still different enough to make it a true alternate version. In fact, my ideal 12″ would have been to have ‘Fortune’ as the A-side and this sparser take of ‘Sunlight’ and ‘Sunlight Strings’ as the B-sides. But that’s the occasionally frustrating world of Felt for you. Doesn’t always go the way you want.
The Third Album: The Strange Idols Pattern and Other Short Stories
Okay, let me take a deep breath….and here we go.
What an album.
When one discovers the wonders of this LP, it’s like discovering buried treasure….and it’s yours, all yours! The later Forever Breathes the Lonely Word is rightfully applauded as a melodic classic, but this is at the very least its equal. Actually, I think I like it more. Its obscurity in the pop world is maddening. I mean, the likes of ‘Spanish House’, ‘Roman Litter’ and ‘Dismantled King is Off the Throne’ are hidden gems of astounding quality and beauty and the thing is, they could have been hits! They are examples of what I rate as “perfect songs”, in that every single second of each is a total delight; they have killer melodies, great lyrics, and that indescribable magic when a band just play off each other and create a swirling rush of a tune. Of course, the rhythm section is unbeatable, but the real stars are Lawrence and Deebank, who both weave spellbinding textures, sounds and feelings from their chemistry together; Deebank delivers a spectacular array of delectable melodies, while Lawrence’s wonderfully languid vocals and clever, witty lyrics are showcased better than ever before on `Sunlight Bathed the Golden Glow’ and `Crystal Ball’. One of the most overlooked albums of all time, The Strange Idols… is a truly, maddeningly delightful experience.
Let’s go back to some of those highlights – ‘Roman Litter’ is a terrific opener. It eases you in the LP, takes you by the hand and skips along with its insistent yet easy-going beat. Oh yes, we have cymbals on a Felt record! As soon as you hear this song, you know you’re in good hands. The warmth of the playing, and John Leckie’s production, is bright, bouncy and evidence of Felt’s new willingness to make their albums as accessible as their singles. ‘Sempiternal Darkness’ is a solo instrumental, and one of Deebank’s most precious, glittering moments. It’s beautiful, so pretty, so out-of-time and sad, so elegant. ‘Spanish House’ effortlessly found its way into my top 5 Felt songs of all time as soon as I heard it. It’s stupendously catchy. It gets everything right. I mean, spectacularly right. One listen and I was absolutely sold. As if I needed further evidence that Felt were genius, then this comes along and just wins me over to such an overwhelming degree that I realise that the public and the radio’s loss was our gain. I envy those who have yet to discover this gem. It makes me smile. I hope it does the same for you. I still can’t quite work out what the song’s actually about though. References to ‘galleon seas’ and televisions and whatnot. ‘Imprint’ is a Lawrence solo piece – very lovely indeed, like the rising sun coming through the windows of your bedroom.
The best version of ‘Sunlight Bathed the Golden Glow’ follows – less overdone than the earlier single take, and more in keeping with the sound of the rest of this album. Great lyrics on this one – there’s rarely been a more example of faint praise than ‘I thought your poetry was…. sometimes good’. I’ve mean meaning to read Rimbaud’s A Season in Hell ever since hearing this song, even if I’m afraid I’m not going to know what it’s about. The beautiful ‘Vasco de Gama’ (one of two Felt tracks named after Mexican conquistadors) kicks off the second side – more unfolding melodies that blossom like flowers, really very pretty indeed. Frustratingly, apart from the 1989 release which combined this album with Ignite the Seven Cannons, all CD versions to date omit a Deebank instrumental piece entitled “Crucifix Heaven” which originally followed ‘Vasco de Gama’. It’s a brilliant, Spanish guitar-influenced piece which really does belong back on this album. Why wasn’t it included? Apparently, Lawrence isn’t keen on it; if that’s true, that’s a poor excuse for exclusion! After that we get the incredible ‘Dismantled King is Off the Throne’, which gets 10/10 for that title alone. An absolutely breathless, non-stop rush of melody, this is one song that I really, really, really, really wish had been a hit. To be fair, it wasn’t even released as a single, so I should stop pining, but damn there are few songs as fantastic as this one. It’s remarkably stirring for a song that opens with wondering what’s better: ‘a life of misery or an awful suicide’. ‘Crystal Ball’ mellows things considerably, a glorious thing if ever I heard one. The closing ‘Whirlpool Vision of Shame’ is a re-recording of ‘My Face is on Fire’ and it’s a fine alternative. Neither take is considerably better or worse than the other, though if you can’t get enough of Deebank, then you may find yourself preferring this one.
The Strange Idols.., if it had just been the only album from any given artist, might have been given relatively more attention as a indie masterpiece from a lost artist, but because this is Felt, and whenever Felt is mentioned it’s always ‘Primitive Painters’ and/or Forever Breathes the Lonely Word, it means that this album is getting even less attention than it deserves. I truly think that not only is it Felt’s masterpiece, and not only is one of the best albums of the eighties, it is one of the best albums of all time. Everything clicked on this one, everything seemed bright on this album, everything felt as golden as sunlight’s glow. The band would still remain brilliant, but for me this and ‘Fortune’ are their peaks. If only ‘Fortune’ had been on this album too, then it could have been even better…
PS: The upcoming 2018 CD release will re-instate ‘Crucifix Heaven’, which is great news!
The Sixth Single: ‘Primitive Painters’
The band’s biggest hit, a UK Independent Chart #1 (didn’t crack the regular charts, sadly) and a bona fide collaboration with two of the Cocteau Twins, this is an epic, six-minute whirlwind of wonder. The producer was Robin Guthrie, whose distinctive approach made the Cocteaus one of the most addictive, multi-coloured, tactile and sensual bands of the Eighties – there are those who balked at what he did with Felt, that he added too many layers and made everything a mess in the process, but I love what he did. If Felt were a more commercial prospect, an album like Ignite the Seven Cannons might have warranted a deluxe edition and the thing could have been given some kind of de-Guthrie-isation that would strip it of all of its excesses and we could have been treated to an alternate version, but I say stick with what we’ve got. Besides, one thing that I think all of us Felt fans are in agreement with is that ‘Primitive Painters’ is a total success. Their most anthemic song, notable for the presence of Elizabeth Fraser, who joins Lawrence on the awesome chorus and pretty much from the half-way point onwards as the song begins its long finale. It’s a beautiful thing, going round and round and working its way to an ecstatic headrush. A six minute swim in luscious waters, `Primitive Painters’ is a euphoric, shimmering and very atmospheric masterpiece of 1980’s indie pop which still sounds magnificent to this day. For the first and last time, Felt sound truly collaborative, stepping outside of their world and into a bigger one, and for a moment it was glorious.
The B-side is a reworking of ‘Cathedral’ from their first album. There’s more oomph this time, notably with the drums. You could argue that it’s a bit pointless, and the fragility of the original has been vanquished, but I like to think that it was a nice in-road to their earlier material for those who had just got into this band. After all, ‘Primitive Painters’ was likely to be a lot of people’s introduction to Felt.
The Fourth Album: Ignite the Seven Cannons
In theory this should be the greatest Felt album of all.
Okay, bear with me.
Imagine recommending a perfect Felt album, one that perfectly encapsulates all that is great about the band. It isn’t easy, because the later ones feel incomplete without Deebank, just like the earlier ones feel incomplete without Duffy. Yet here we have an album that has both of them on it – the only one of the ten – and yet it’s all too much. Actually, that’s not because of something like Deebank and Duffy fighting for space or whatnot. The reason Ignite feels so cluttered is that the production by Cocteau Twin Robin Guthrie is fucking crazy. Everything merges in classic early Cocteaus-era style and it’s totally overwhelming, overripe and immense. Oddly enough, the album is relatively normal if you listen to it at a reasonably quiet level, but who would want to do that? Anyway, despite all of that, the reason Ignite is not the greatest Felt album is because it’s so structurally unbalanced. The first side is frankly perfect, one of the greatest sides of Felt vinyl you’re likely to hear. The second is just good. Good, but not good enough.
‘My Darkest Light Will Shine’ is another classic Felt scene-setter and almost self-aware-Lawrence is ‘back’, in case you didn’t notice! the production is overdone to the point where it almost becomes woozy listening, but oddly enough that’s part of its appeal. Given that the full title of this LP is Ignite the Seven Cannons and Set Sail for the Sun, there’s an appropriately nautical, oceanic and wavy ambience to the songs. Listen to it at the wrong time and you may feel a little sea sick, but at the right time it’s delightfully dreamy. ‘The Day the Rain Came Down’ begins with such insanely ecstatic ascending guitar that you may very well burst out laughing at the sheer giddy joy of it all. Of course, it’s not just the guitar. The bass and the drums keep it all going, and Duffy’s keyboards are a constant wellspring of warmth. I absolutely adore this song. It’s short, relentless, utterly thrilling and definitely in my top ten Felt songs. ‘Scarlet Servants’ is a nice respite after such high-velocity pop. Deebank and Duffy are beautifully matched. ‘I Don’t Know Which Way to Turn’ is brilliantly melodic, especially during the magnificent chorus, where everything just clicks wonderfully. The lyrics are some of the most revealing Lawrence would deliver – a line like ‘when I’m up there on the stage/I just hide my head and hope and pray that soon enough the show will end/why do I go through this hell?’. From someone who seemingly craved stardom, this is a shocking confession. The album’s centrepiece, in fact Felt’s own musical centrepiece, is ‘Primitive Painters’, and I’ve already discussed that, so let’s move on. On to the second side.
The second side used to seriously infuriate me. I used to think that it was such a disappointment. For one thing, there were too many instrumentals. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with a instrumental-dominated second side. Low, anyone? But the melodies just weren’t strong enough, and without vocals, they sounded insubstantial. Only two things initially shined for me
here – ‘Black Ship in the Harbour’ is a wonderful song. It really
sounds like it was recorded at sea, and of course, its second line would
provide the inspiration for one of Poem of the River‘s most darkly funny lyrics. ‘Southern State Tapestry’ winds itself up thrillingly
before letting loose with a stream of melodic splendour. You can just
sense the gears slowly turning and then eventually letting itself rip. A
great album closer. Time has led to me appreciate the likes of the slight but entertaining flourishes of ‘Textile Ranch’ and ‘Serpent Shade’, and ‘Elegance of an Only Dream’ has some nice moments. ‘Caspian See’ remains the one duff moment, probably the most inconsequential, throwaway thing the band ever recorded.
However, the first side is just too good – so good it pretty much front-loads the album with classics, and the second side can’t help but feel like a disappointment. Despite ‘Primitive Painters’ modest success, Ignite the Seven Cannons didn’t set the world or anyone’s face on fire, and given that Deebank would leave the band for good, taking his essential, astonishing talent with him as he did so, Felt were now at a crossroads. How to proceed?
PS: In a surprising move, 2018’s long-awaited Felt reissue campaign intends to put right what Lawrence sees went wrong all those years ago by remixing most of the vocal songs on this album (‘Primitive Painters’ excepted) and removing ‘Serpent Shade’ from the second side so that the latter half of the album isn’t so instrumental-heavy. I can’t wait to see how the new mixes sound, but be careful what you wish for. This year’s much-touted remix of David Bowie’s Lodger was another case of ‘correcting’ flaws but in my opinion made the album sound worse!
The Seventh Single: ‘Ballad of the Band’
This EP marked a distinct change from the Deebank era. The atmospherics have been dialled down (and even though Robin Guthrie is back in the producer’s chair, his approach is much more restrained) and the emphasis is more on a simpler, even rootsier feel, as though Felt were having their very own 1968 and decided it was time to go back to basics. The title track is also far more lyrically blunt and less mysterious than anything we’d heard from Lawrence before, as though the honesty of ‘I Don’t Know Which Way to Turn’ had inspired him to carry on down that route. Just one listen to the words and it’s obvious it’s all about the recently departed Deebank. Maybe even the lovely ‘I Didn’t Mean to Hurt You’ is about him too? The flipside features a couple of instrumentals that are also a major departure from Felt’s established M.O. Listen to all that piano! Piano hadn’t played a part in the band’s sound up until now, and ‘Ferdinand Magellan’ and ‘Candles in a Church’ are essentially solo Martin Duffy pieces. They’re absolutely beautiful. They sound utterly timeless – centuries old even. Very romantic, very elegant pieces, very intimate. Close your eyes and you’re there. Somewhere else.
The Fifth Album: Let the Snakes Crinkle Their Heads to Death
As soon as this album begins, I laugh; “Song for William S. Harvey” kicks off with a so-silly-it’s-almost-genius bit of Hammond organ and you may be wondering what on earth happened with Felt…after all, they’d released a couple of sterling indie-pop treasures and were almost on their way to becoming quite popular….then this! A short collection of instrumentals, which means NO vocals by Lawrence!
Never mind though, especially since “Song for William S. Harvey” (named after the guy who designed many a classic LP cover for Elektra Records) does turn out to be a rather cracking treat – a little bit goofy, a little bit delightful, and just as melodic as you’d expect from Felt by now. This was one of two instrumental albums in the band’s lifetime – one of them was pretty bad (Train Above the City), but this is a real good one; taken alone, each piece is short, almost slight, reminiscent of Brian Eno’s fade-in/fade-out glimmers of instrumentation on Music for Films, but like that work, if taken as one listen, it turns out to be yet another Felt gem. For one thing, it’s such a small album. So unassuming, so friendly, so cute and delightful. Of course, its very lightness makes it seem far less substantial than most of the other Felt albums, but sometimes you just want an album to cuddle up to and relax with.
“Ancient City Where I Lived” does feature great guitar (by Lawrence) and it’s a mini-beauty, accompanied by the sound of the tide and passing seagulls flying overhead. “The Seventeenth Century” and “The Palace” are very good, evocative mood-pieces, with nice interplay between Lawrence’s guitar and Duffy’s organ. The latter gets a real chance to properly shine with the very sweet, lovely “Indian Scriptures”, the sedate, minimalist respite that is “Voyage to Illumination” and the delightful, cocktail bar-esque shuffle of “Jewel Sky”, which is what the similarly styled but badly executed Train Above the City should have sounded like. “Viking Dress” (the longest track here at 2.50 minutes!) is a classic: ‘Viking Dress’ drifts into earshot like the morning tide, its guitar a buoy lost at sea, but then the mist fades away and the sun comes in with that sparkling Duffy melody and I’m so, so happy to be listening to this pretty wonder. On the other end of the spectrum, the chirpy, cheeky “Sapphire Mansions” is the weakest track, and that’s a shame as it ends a unique, quietly dazzling album on a slightly sour note, but never mind; for the most part, this is another wonderfully offbeat, charming Felt album.
PS: Another 2018 revision from Lawrence for the impending reissue will involve changing this album’s admittedly bonkers title to the less ostentatious The Seventeenth Century…
The Sixth Album: Forever Breathes the Lonely Word
PS: In a surprising move, 2018’s long-awaited Felt reissue campaign intends to put right what Lawrence sees went wrong all those years ago by remixing most of the vocal songs on this album (‘Primitive Painters’ excepted) and removing ‘Serpent Shade’ from the second side so that the latter half of the album isn’t so instrumental-heavy. I can’t wait to see how the new mixes sound, but be careful what you wish for. This year’s much-touted remix of David Bowie’s Lodger was another case of ‘correcting’ flaws but in my opinion made the album sound worse!
The Seventh Single: ‘Ballad of the Band’
This EP marked a distinct change from the Deebank era. The atmospherics have been dialled down (and even though Robin Guthrie is back in the producer’s chair, his approach is much more restrained) and the emphasis is more on a simpler, even rootsier feel, as though Felt were having their very own 1968 and decided it was time to go back to basics. The title track is also far more lyrically blunt and less mysterious than anything we’d heard from Lawrence before, as though the honesty of ‘I Don’t Know Which Way to Turn’ had inspired him to carry on down that route. Just one listen to the words and it’s obvious it’s all about the recently departed Deebank. Maybe even the lovely ‘I Didn’t Mean to Hurt You’ is about him too? The flipside features a couple of instrumentals that are also a major departure from Felt’s established M.O. Listen to all that piano! Piano hadn’t played a part in the band’s sound up until now, and ‘Ferdinand Magellan’ and ‘Candles in a Church’ are essentially solo Martin Duffy pieces. They’re absolutely beautiful. They sound utterly timeless – centuries old even. Very romantic, very elegant pieces, very intimate. Close your eyes and you’re there. Somewhere else.
The Fifth Album: Let the Snakes Crinkle Their Heads to Death
As soon as this album begins, I laugh; “Song for William S. Harvey” kicks off with a so-silly-it’s-almost-genius bit of Hammond organ and you may be wondering what on earth happened with Felt…after all, they’d released a couple of sterling indie-pop treasures and were almost on their way to becoming quite popular….then this! A short collection of instrumentals, which means NO vocals by Lawrence!
Never mind though, especially since “Song for William S. Harvey” (named after the guy who designed many a classic LP cover for Elektra Records) does turn out to be a rather cracking treat – a little bit goofy, a little bit delightful, and just as melodic as you’d expect from Felt by now. This was one of two instrumental albums in the band’s lifetime – one of them was pretty bad (Train Above the City), but this is a real good one; taken alone, each piece is short, almost slight, reminiscent of Brian Eno’s fade-in/fade-out glimmers of instrumentation on Music for Films, but like that work, if taken as one listen, it turns out to be yet another Felt gem. For one thing, it’s such a small album. So unassuming, so friendly, so cute and delightful. Of course, its very lightness makes it seem far less substantial than most of the other Felt albums, but sometimes you just want an album to cuddle up to and relax with.
“Ancient City Where I Lived” does feature great guitar (by Lawrence) and it’s a mini-beauty, accompanied by the sound of the tide and passing seagulls flying overhead. “The Seventeenth Century” and “The Palace” are very good, evocative mood-pieces, with nice interplay between Lawrence’s guitar and Duffy’s organ. The latter gets a real chance to properly shine with the very sweet, lovely “Indian Scriptures”, the sedate, minimalist respite that is “Voyage to Illumination” and the delightful, cocktail bar-esque shuffle of “Jewel Sky”, which is what the similarly styled but badly executed Train Above the City should have sounded like. “Viking Dress” (the longest track here at 2.50 minutes!) is a classic: ‘Viking Dress’ drifts into earshot like the morning tide, its guitar a buoy lost at sea, but then the mist fades away and the sun comes in with that sparkling Duffy melody and I’m so, so happy to be listening to this pretty wonder. On the other end of the spectrum, the chirpy, cheeky “Sapphire Mansions” is the weakest track, and that’s a shame as it ends a unique, quietly dazzling album on a slightly sour note, but never mind; for the most part, this is another wonderfully offbeat, charming Felt album.
PS: Another 2018 revision from Lawrence for the impending reissue will involve changing this album’s admittedly bonkers title to the less ostentatious The Seventeenth Century…
The Sixth Album: Forever Breathes the Lonely Word
This is the one Felt album that we can all agree on. It’s an absolute gem. It’s not the be-all, end-all Felt album though. I mean, it doesn’t have Deebank on it, and Felt without Deebank is incomplete, just as Felt without Duffy is incomplete. Now that would make you think that Ignite the Seven Cannons is a complete Felt record, but it isn’t, as I’ve already mentioned. Forever Breathes is still a fucking magnificent, wonderful thing nonetheless. It was the first Felt album I ever heard, and at first I was shocked at how prevalent the organ was on it. In fact, I wasn’t sure how to respond to it. That organ sounded a little, well chintzy, I suppose? A bit too bargain basement? People would level a smiliar ‘charity shop’ keyboard ambience towards Candida Doyle’s playing on Pulp’s records, but I never had a problem with that. In fact, I loved it. However, Duffy’s insistent organ-playing on this record threatened to irritate me. I got over it.
The album also marked a return to traditional songs after the delightful instrumental interludes of the previous album; Duffy well and truly proves his worth as a fine replacement for Deebank, delivering jaunty, wonderful keyboard lines over Lawrence’s jingliest and jangliest of guitars. Thos guitars are also as warm and welcoming as a beacon’s light, sometimes as crisp as autumn leaves. That voice of his still isn’t technically amazing, but Lawrence has real character and personality to his vocals, and he knows how to use what he has got to wonderful effect; I’ll take that over your textbook `talented’ voices any day of the week. His chemistry with Duffy on this album was never bettered, before or since.
“Rain of Crystal Spires” is a terrific opener; the guitars glisten and sparkle and contribute to one of the brightest melodies the band ever created; of all the songs Felt made in their post-Deebank years, this one’s the absolute best. No wonder it was selected as a single, which was quite a rarity for a band who preferred to keep their albums and singles as separate entities; still, just one listen to this absolute gem of a song and you can see why it was given A-side status. Almost as good is the buoyant “Down But Not Yet Out” which crackles with energy and heavenly music from start to finish; to be honest, there’s an identical, memorable guitar hook that’s used in both of these opening songs, as well as “Grey Streets”, but the effect isn’t repetitive, as the hook in question is so damn good that it’s worth hearing more than once. The warm, woozy “September Lady” boasts some of the sweetest `aaahhh’ backing vocals, glorious guitars, a swirling, romantic feel….this album is addictive stuff, believe me! “Grey Streets” closes off a more or less faultless first side with countless wonderful moments throughout; one of the fastest paced and infectiously exciting Felt songs around, and that’s a fact.
On the second side, “All the People I Like are Those That are Dead” is appropriately ghostly and atmospheric, boasting the immortal opening couplet of ‘Perhaps I should entertain/The very fact that I’m insane’ while “Gather Up Your Wings and Fly” has some euphoric, thrilling hooks and the wonderful “A Wave Crashed on Rocks” is one of the band’s best ballads, truly heart-stopping and breathtakingly elegant. The closing “Hours of Darkness Have Changed My Mind” is probably the least memorable thing here, but it still flows by very pleasantly indeed.
It’s this album that stands as Lawrence’s strongest argument that the band could be just as vital without Deebank. He’s not missed on this album.
The Seventh Single: ‘Rain of Crystal Spires’
As previously mentioned, the album track ‘Rain of Crystal Spires’ was released as a single, backed with fellow Forever Breathes song ‘Gather Up Your Wings and Fly’ and two new B-sides. ‘I Will Die with my Head in Flames’ and ‘The Sandman’s on the Rise Again’ are essential, snappy and brief blasts of rocket-fuelled power pop. Taken together, the two songs barely make it past the three minute mark. They would have been too fast and frenzied to be included on Forever Breathes, although in terms of quality, they are easily the equal of anything on that album. Lawrence’s guitar can barely contain itself on ‘Sandman’, Duffy sounds wired on ‘Flames’. Excellent songs.
The Seventh Album: Poem of the River
“I will be the first person in history to die of boredom” is a great opening line for an album. “And I will have as my epitaph the second line of `Black Ship in the Harbour'” is a cheeky follow-up. By the way, that `second line`, taken from the band’s Ignite the Seven Cannons album, is “I was a moment that quickly passed”. It’s a striking beginning to the autumnal Poem of the River, which continues to build on the new-found musical partnership between Lawrence and Duffy and, despite being slightly not as good as Forever Breathes the Lonely Word, is another work of wonder to add to a canon work that was, frankly, an embarrassment of riches by this stage.
The mood here is alternately romantic, rough, sweet and laid-back, with two epic songs – “She Lives By the Castle” and “Riding on the Equator” – dominating proceedings in terms of length. The former, rumoured to be about future Saint Etienne singer Sarah Cracknell, is a real beauty; if only it didn’t go on just that little bit too long with its extended organ solo at the end, we’d be talking one of the top ten Felt songs. Still, for the first four minutes, it’s one of the most delicate, sweetest things created by this band, and Lawrence’s vocals and guitars in particular are rather wonderful. “Riding on the Equator” isn’t quite classic Felt, but it slides along prettily and contributes to the album very well. There’s a long guitar solo at the end that might not jump out at you upon first listen, but it’s very sweet indeed! The opening “Declaration”, with its rough, ready and simpler sound, foreshadows the down-to-earth sound of The Pictorial Jackson Review. The lyrics are quite vicious compared to the rest of the album, with its surprising threat of ‘I’ll stab a knife in the face/Of any man who dares to oppose me’ while the stunning, adorable mini-masterpiece that is “Stained-Glass Windows in the Sky” would be just as much of an influence with its short, sharp burst of pop bliss. The latter song in particular encapsulates everything great about the Lawrence/Duffy era of Felt in just over two minutes; it wasn’t a single (although a video was made for it) but it’s peachy, slinky guitar, a beautifully resigned Lawrence vocal and an insistently catchy beat meant it really should have been one. It drifts in and out before you know it, but its fleeting nature is the main reason it works, and I have looped this track over and over many times, I must admit. You’ll feel like taking a ‘jetplane on a highway’ after this one, I hope.
Poem of the River may be the most innocuous, nicest Felt album of them all, barring maybe Let the Snakes… It doesn’t scream for your attention, it just drifts along very nicely in its own slow-burning way. “Silver Plane” is an understated, gentle little ditty that I like more and more every time I hear it, while the closing semi-acoustic “Dark Red Birds” is up there with “A Preacher in New England” as one of the best Felt album closers; haunting, relaxing, poetic and deeply lovely, it just pulls you in and keeps you there. It truly sounds like a cold autumn sunset in November.
A perfect, mellow accompaniment to Forever Breathes the Lonely Word‘s pop-fuelled sparkle, Poem of the River proved that a this stage, Felt could do no wrong.
The Eighth Single: ‘The Final Resting of the Ark
Felt were spoiling us with yet another EP of non-album songs after Poem, and Robin Guthrie was back too. The title track remains the sparsest, most haunting lead-track of any of their non-album releases. Guthrie’s approach is even more scaled down than what he gave us on the Ballad of the Band, all hushed, acoustic, whispered ambience. ‘There’s No Such Thing as Victory’ is even sparser: gentle, melancholic and resigned, if it wasn’t for the golden glow of the production, this song would be even sadder than it already was.
‘Buried Wild Blind’ is a
minute-long guitar instrumental, and it may as well have been called
‘Golden Sunshine’ for the sheer glistening, honeyed warmth it exudes.
Yet to be released on CD, it’s a small and beaming little moment. ‘Fire
Circle’ is very slight, just a small piece of guitar, nothing more,
nothing less. It’s very nice indeed. This whole EP is very nice, in
fact. It’s even more autumnal than Poem, as though that album’s
closing ‘Dark Red Birds’ was the launching point for a deeper venture
into the mysterious woods that made for Felt’s new-found environment.
This would change soon, though…
The Eighth Album: The Pictorial Jackson Review
This may very well be the most frustrating of all Felt’s albums; we have a very fine first side which sees them going right for the pop jugular, and a second side that takes in ambient jazz with mostly unimpressive results. So let’s concentrate on the first eight tracks. Taking their cue from Poem of the River‘s delightful pop treat “Stained-Glass Windows in the Sky” we have a set of utterly unpretentious, cheery and engaging mini-gems that work very nicely, even if I was initially rather disappointed with this new, relatively simple direction.
The mystique, sweep and drama of Felt’s earlier days had been well and truly swept aside for a sound that was nowhere near as ambitious, though it’s informal, upbeat mood soon won me over. It’s almost like an 80’s equivalent of Bob Dylan retiring to Big Pink and recording The Basement Tapes with The Band. It sounds like a bunch of guys recording good, fun music. It sounds live, and the incarnation of Felt here are delightfully in sync. So yeah, there’s still enough recognisable character here to make this another quintessentially Felt album, but this is nevertheless a wildly different sound to that of “Primitive Painters”, “The World is as Soft as Lace” or “Dismantled King is Off the Throne”; personally, I’ll always prefer the earlier material, but taken on its own terms, this first side works brilliantly. The considerably lo-fi production has meant that this album has its detractors, but if you’re willing to go along for the rough, ready ride, then it proves quite lovable.
The opening “Apple Boutique” has great guitars and sweet organ work, not to mention charming lyrics (plus Lawrence doing his best sedated Lou Reed impersonation) and a simple, summery mood that works a treat. Be prepared to bounce along to this one. Clearly the band thought so too, as this method is repeated over the next seven songs. Luckily, none of it gets stale or repetitive, as the playing is consistently lively and the songs themselves are breezily short, with only one (“Under a Pale Light”) spanning over three minutes. Other highlights are the delightful “Bitter End” (which has a splendid guitar performance), the delicate “Under a Pale Light” and the kooky, funny “Don’t Die on My Doorstep”. Encompassing less than twenty minutes of music, the first eight songs on this album would have worked very well on their own, and could have made for a great EP. In fact, it could have just been released as a proper album. It still would have been longer than Let the Snakes…!
However, things go all pear-shaped on the majority of the second side, when the album mutates into a jazzy ambient work; “Sending Lady Load” starts off reasonably well enough, but then those dreaded xylophone noodlings that would come to dominate the cocktail-bar banality of Train Above the City creep into earshot, and it all becomes wearisome. Also, at over twelve minutes, this piece is far too long. It’s almost enough to entirely sink the album, but the closing track “The Darkest Ending” resolves matters a little; exploring the same direction as “Sending Lady Load” but with much better results, it has an eerie, spooky atmosphere and essentially delivers far more in its three minutes than the preceding track attempted in twelve.
So, despite that unfortunate excursion into near-elevator music on the second side, The Pictorial Jackson Review is well worth getting for the first eight tracks (and, to be fair, the last track too), but be warned…..a pressing error on early copies of the 2003 reissue resulted in everything from “Apple Boutique” to “Don’t Die on My Doorstep” being accidentally replaced with the entirety of Felt’s next album Train Above the City, before returning to the album proper for its last two tracks. Blimey, avoid that version at all costs.
The Ninth Album: Train Above the City
This is the most controversial Felt album; controversial, obviously for those who have heard of it, and I can’t imagine there are many. This is unlike anything else they’d ever released. All of their other albums have a distinctive sound that makes each its own, but all of them are quintessentially Felt. To be fair, I don’t know many people who have listened to The Pictorial Jackson Review, but if I’m sure if I asked everyone who had which side they’d have preferred to be the springboard for a follow-up album, I get the feeling the majority would plump for the first side. But oh no, it turns out that Side 2 was the germ for what was to follow, and what followed was the most surprising Felt album of them all.
I mean, it doesn’t sound anything like Felt. Now I have no problem with bands moving in directions so far away from their norm that it doesn’t resemble what made people fall for them in the first place, but if the music simply isn’t any good, then we’re talking disaster.
Train Above the City is Felt’s Metal Machine Music, and it’s about half as listenable. The first side is like having the intro music to Frasier on loop for fifteen minutes. We’re talking serious, cocktail jazz muzak here, which might drive you bonkers if you’re not in the right mood. I have no idea what said right mood could be, by the way. Xylophones are everywhere. Lawrence on the other hand is nowhere to be heard (this is a Martin Duffy/Gary Ainge collaboration). All he did was contribute the song titles, which are predictably brilliant. This is not typical Felt (even the album sleeve, a garish yellow, isn’t in keeping with the rest of their artwork), but on the other hand, it’s so bloomin’ contrary and unpredictable that in a sense, it’s perfect Felt. Just don’t ask me to listen to it too often. No one can doubt the musical chops of Duffy and Ainge (and this is the kind of muso album that the word ‘chops’ is sadly suited for), but you have to wonder what they were thinking – were they taking the piss? Sometimes, like on the title track and ‘Press Softly on the Brakes, Holly’, I can’t help but laugh – this stuff is such a perfect approximation of bland jazz noodling. But seriously, the first half of the album is without a doubt the worst stretch of any Felt album, ever.
The slower, more melancholy second half of the album does see an improvement of sorts;`Spectral Morning’ and `Teargardens’ are actually quite nice, and the tender `Book of Swords’ is really, genuinely lovely, by far and away the best thing here. Actually, I’ve been horrible towards this album, so let’s concentrate on this track. Yes, you could say it’s a little soppy and a little drippy, but this lovely piece of music has often caught me off guard and broken my wee lil’ heart. It is almost ridiculously pretty and gives me doubt that this was album was meant to be a parody, which is something I couldn’t help/hope but presume for the most part. The melody is one of Duffy’s saddest. It starts off a bit like Chicago’s much-loved wedding staple ‘Colour My World’ and then goes off on its own. A sparkling xylophone and downbeat piano combine beautifully before we get a brief but gorgeous mid-section where everything blossoms and for once, this Train Above the City album really clicks.
I guess, if you’re in a forgiving mood, you might appreciate what I assume is a joke and admire the album for its sheer wilful perversity, but I’m confident that this is most fans’ least favourite Felt album.
The Tenth Single: ‘Space Blues’
Ah, now this is more like it! Now, please don’t think I’m one of those reactionaries who only want Felt to stick to what they know, because this EP is still a departure and a step forward, but unlike Train Above the City, it’s a good one. Only the jingle-jangle of ‘Female Star’ is a bit of a throwback, as if the melodies of The Pictorial Jackson Review were shot through with the fuller sound of Forever Breathes the Lonely Word. Elsewhere, we have more evidence of Felt refusing to stand still. The pleasant country swoon of ‘Tuesday’s Secret’ points the way towards the smooth, polished but still idiosyncratic sound of their final album, and the title track’s colourful electronics point even further towards Lawrence’s next project, the glorious Denim. Backing vocals on this song are from Rose McDowall from Strawberry Switchblade, by the way! I’ve saved my favourite song here for last, and that’s the beautiful cover of The Beach Boys’ ‘Be Still’. Originally a gentle, sparse Dennis Wilson ode to serenity from the glorious 1968 album Friends, Felt make it even more quiet and totally their own. It’s the only cover they officially recorded, and is akin to floating down a never-ending river.
The not-really Eleventh Single: ‘Get Out of My Mirror’
This was a free flexidisc. No B-side. The A-side is taken from….
The Tenth Album: Me and a Monkey on the Moon
Here we are. The end of the road. The tenth album. It was something of an artistic recovery after the disappointing Train Above the City, and yet this swansong is also quite unusual in that for a Felt album, it sounds….well, normal! The opening song even talks of (not) making love! I though Felt were above all that sex stuff, you know? Produced by Adrian Borland, lead singer of another tremendous, underrated band from the 1980’s (The Sound), Felt had never sounded as polished and mainstream as they do here; the playing is immaculate, refined, and to be honest….lacking in edge. For some, this sleek new direction might prove a turn-off, and yes, there’s none of the strange magic of their earlier, classic records.
Still, it’s a damn good album, with lyrics that talk of escape and decades (and I suppose bands) coming to an end, maybe even some regrets over lost friends, all of it beautifully played and sung throughout; the opening “I Can’t Make Love To You Anymore” is very lovely, a slightly country-tinged ballad with some sweet, tender guitar and a great chorus. “Mobile Shack”, with its kooky keyboard effects here and there, hint towards Denim, but the simple, cheeky music also recalls the first side of The Pictorial Jackson Review, albeit with a smoother production. To be honest, this song isn’t really anything special, it goes by well enough and is essentially a bit of filler before the wonderful “Free” comes along, another tender and delicate ballad that feels good and sounds good too. The lyrically curious “Budgie Jacket” (is it autobiographical?) is intriguing and the sprightly “Cartoon Sky” is fun. These are good songs, you know? Well played, consummately executed… hell, even Lawrence’s vocals sound refined.
The album’s major centrepiece is “New Day Dawning”, which has a great first half; a slightly funky guitar (the verses sound like a brighter version of Poem of the River‘s “Declaration”) a shimmering chorus which indeed sounds the musical equivalent of a sunrise….and then there’s the debatable second half and its extended solo; guitar bliss or six-string cheese? Indeed, it sounds as though Oasis may have been paying attention as it sounds a lot like their “Don’t Look Back in Anger” in places. To be honest, it’s this solo that’s entirely indicative of the downside of the `normal’ Felt sound on this album; it’s admittedly well played, but it could have been played by any other guitarist. It’s totally anonymous, and character and personality, with the distinctive feel and sound of Lawrence, Martin Duffy and Maurice Deebank in particular, was what made Felt such a special band. Oh well, I can’t resist the gorgeous “Down an August Path”; it flutters, it feels good to listen to, it’s the best thing on here, definitely. The rest of the album remains solid, be it on the sweet choruses to “Never Let You Go” and “She Deals in Crosses” or particularly on the catchy closer “Get Out of My Mirror”.
Even with the lovely likes of “I Can’t Make Love to You Anymore” and “Down an August Path”, there’s nothing here that I will truly hold dear to my heart, nothing like “Spanish House”, “Fortune” or “The Day the Rain Came Down”; considering how strong this band was for its first eight and a half albums, Me and a Monkey on the Moon is a very good, but not great farewell to one of the greatest bands ever. It wasn’t the last time we’d hear from Lawrence though….he’d back….back in Denim!
Wait, that’s not all…
Collecting together some of those odds ‘n’ sods…
If it’s compilations you’re after, and they will be essential listening if you want to get those non-album singles and B-sides, then the ultimate introduction is 1992’s Absolute Classic Masterpieces, which covers Felt’s years at Cherry Red Records (excluding their brief return to the label in 1989); covered here is the era encompassing the first four albums and the best of the stray tracks; in other words, the Maurice Deebank years. Starting with with `Primitive Painters’ and working backwards, this is a mostly perfect selection of the best songs from the early years – okay, one might quibble at the absence of `I Don’t Know Which Way to Turn’ (which should definitely have taken the place of the good but not great `Textile Ranch’) and the stunning `Spanish House’, but overall this is too good to bother starting with debates about track selection. Non-album selections here are the immortal B-side version of ‘Fortune’, ‘Trails of Colour Dissolve’ (but not its flipside, the A-side ‘My Face is on Fire!), ‘Something Sends Me to Sleep’, pre-Felt oddity ‘Index’ and most interestingly, `Dance of Deliverance’, which isn’t actually a Felt track as such, being as it’s taken from Deebank’s occasionally magnificent solo album from that time (Inner Thought Zone), which takes the languid guitar mood of `Fortune’ to epic lengths. Look, Felt are one of the greatest bands ever, and this is one of the greatest compilations ever. This period in particular had an irresistible charge, dominated by Deebank and Lawrence’s winning chemistry. This is the best introduction to the band, even though it only tells half the story…
Roll on 1993’s Absolute Classic Masterpieces Vol. 2, which covers Felt’s second half of their ten year run, spent at Creation Record. These are the Martin Duffy years. Unlike Volume 1, this compilation runs in chronological order and separates album tracks and single tracks into separate CDs. Disc one (featuring singles and B-sides) is pretty short at only twenty or so minutes, which is weird considering not every B-side of this era has been included (no ‘Candles in a Church’, ‘Buried Wild Blind’, ‘Fire Circle’, ‘Tuesday’s Secret’, ‘Female Star’ are all M.I.A); nevertheless, each of these ten songs are terrific. Disc 2 covers the following albums – Let the Snakes Crinkle Their Heads to Death, Forever Breathes the Lonely Word, Poem of the River, The Pictorial Jackson Review and Train Above the City. Unfortunately Me and a Monkey on the Moon, isn’t covered as that was recorded on Cherry Red (who the band returned to before disbanding).
To be honest, despite the fact that all the pieces chosen here to represent Let the Snakes… are delightful, they don’t really have the same impact outside of the context of the original album; here they come across as too slight. Forever Breathes is well represented, although the omission of `Rain of Crystal Spires’, `September Lady’ or `Down But Not Yet Out’ does seem crazy. The Pictorial Jackson Review is well represented – we get some of the fun treats from side one, and the single good one from side two. The disastrous Train Above the City could have got away with an undeserved positive representation had tracks from its relatively decent second side had been chosen to appear on this disc, yet this CD doesn’t bother to try and mask what this album is- a bit crap – by choosing three anaemic tunes from its first side, ending this compilation on a down note. Why the lovely `Book of Swords’, wasn’t selected instead is a mystery.
Still, this is a more than worthy companion piece to its predecessor, though it is hard to find these days. If you don’t fancy shelling out for a second-hand copy, fear not; all of the second disc can be found on their respective albums, while most of disc one can now be found on the more recent retrospective Stains on a Decade. However, that album doesn’t appear to have “Magellan” or “Autumn” on it….pity. The best Creation-era compilation is the single-disc Bubblegum Perfume from 1990, which mostly avoids album tracks (but does well in highlighting ‘Book of Swords’ – bravo!) and distills the essence of the Duffy years beautifully. Still no Monkey and Moon-era stuff though. Boo! An even better CD re-release in 2011 dispensed with some of the ultimately pointless album-track selections and replaced them with the hard-to-find ‘Tuesday’s Secret’, ‘Fire Circle’ and ‘Female Star’.
As for the afore-mentioned Stains on a Decade from 2003, it’s a fine compilation, but covering ten years worth on one CD was always going to be a nightmare. Still, but limiting itself to single/EP tracks (‘Dismantled King…’ excepted), it’s about as fairly representative a single CD of the band can be, I suppose. Plus, it features the single version of ‘Sunlight Bathed…’, even if that version isn’t very good.
Finally, there was 1987’s Gold Mine Trash, which was the first Felt compilation, and a seemingly random selection of songs from the Deebank-era. It’s only really worthwhile for the inclusion of demo versions of ‘Sunlight Bathed…’ and ‘Dismantled King…’ which are well worth your time, being notably different in feel to the more familiar takes.
To my knowledge, the only Felt tracks that have never been available on CD are ‘Break It’,the original B-side version of ‘A Preacher in New England’, ‘Now Summer’s Spread Its Wings Again’, ‘Candles in a Church’ and ‘Buried Wild Blind’. There was a bonus disc made available on the Felt Box set released in 1993, which gathered a few odds and sods like the alternate ‘Something Sends Me to Sleep’, the often neglected ‘My Face is on Fire’, the single mix of ‘Sunlight Bathed…’, ‘Sunlight Strings’ and the original B-side version of ‘Red Indians’, but that’s not easy to come by.
So there you go. Now listen to the records please…
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The Eighth Album: The Pictorial Jackson Review
This may very well be the most frustrating of all Felt’s albums; we have a very fine first side which sees them going right for the pop jugular, and a second side that takes in ambient jazz with mostly unimpressive results. So let’s concentrate on the first eight tracks. Taking their cue from Poem of the River‘s delightful pop treat “Stained-Glass Windows in the Sky” we have a set of utterly unpretentious, cheery and engaging mini-gems that work very nicely, even if I was initially rather disappointed with this new, relatively simple direction.
The mystique, sweep and drama of Felt’s earlier days had been well and truly swept aside for a sound that was nowhere near as ambitious, though it’s informal, upbeat mood soon won me over. It’s almost like an 80’s equivalent of Bob Dylan retiring to Big Pink and recording The Basement Tapes with The Band. It sounds like a bunch of guys recording good, fun music. It sounds live, and the incarnation of Felt here are delightfully in sync. So yeah, there’s still enough recognisable character here to make this another quintessentially Felt album, but this is nevertheless a wildly different sound to that of “Primitive Painters”, “The World is as Soft as Lace” or “Dismantled King is Off the Throne”; personally, I’ll always prefer the earlier material, but taken on its own terms, this first side works brilliantly. The considerably lo-fi production has meant that this album has its detractors, but if you’re willing to go along for the rough, ready ride, then it proves quite lovable.
The opening “Apple Boutique” has great guitars and sweet organ work, not to mention charming lyrics (plus Lawrence doing his best sedated Lou Reed impersonation) and a simple, summery mood that works a treat. Be prepared to bounce along to this one. Clearly the band thought so too, as this method is repeated over the next seven songs. Luckily, none of it gets stale or repetitive, as the playing is consistently lively and the songs themselves are breezily short, with only one (“Under a Pale Light”) spanning over three minutes. Other highlights are the delightful “Bitter End” (which has a splendid guitar performance), the delicate “Under a Pale Light” and the kooky, funny “Don’t Die on My Doorstep”. Encompassing less than twenty minutes of music, the first eight songs on this album would have worked very well on their own, and could have made for a great EP. In fact, it could have just been released as a proper album. It still would have been longer than Let the Snakes…!
However, things go all pear-shaped on the majority of the second side, when the album mutates into a jazzy ambient work; “Sending Lady Load” starts off reasonably well enough, but then those dreaded xylophone noodlings that would come to dominate the cocktail-bar banality of Train Above the City creep into earshot, and it all becomes wearisome. Also, at over twelve minutes, this piece is far too long. It’s almost enough to entirely sink the album, but the closing track “The Darkest Ending” resolves matters a little; exploring the same direction as “Sending Lady Load” but with much better results, it has an eerie, spooky atmosphere and essentially delivers far more in its three minutes than the preceding track attempted in twelve.
So, despite that unfortunate excursion into near-elevator music on the second side, The Pictorial Jackson Review is well worth getting for the first eight tracks (and, to be fair, the last track too), but be warned…..a pressing error on early copies of the 2003 reissue resulted in everything from “Apple Boutique” to “Don’t Die on My Doorstep” being accidentally replaced with the entirety of Felt’s next album Train Above the City, before returning to the album proper for its last two tracks. Blimey, avoid that version at all costs.
The Ninth Album: Train Above the City
This is the most controversial Felt album; controversial, obviously for those who have heard of it, and I can’t imagine there are many. This is unlike anything else they’d ever released. All of their other albums have a distinctive sound that makes each its own, but all of them are quintessentially Felt. To be fair, I don’t know many people who have listened to The Pictorial Jackson Review, but if I’m sure if I asked everyone who had which side they’d have preferred to be the springboard for a follow-up album, I get the feeling the majority would plump for the first side. But oh no, it turns out that Side 2 was the germ for what was to follow, and what followed was the most surprising Felt album of them all.
I mean, it doesn’t sound anything like Felt. Now I have no problem with bands moving in directions so far away from their norm that it doesn’t resemble what made people fall for them in the first place, but if the music simply isn’t any good, then we’re talking disaster.
Train Above the City is Felt’s Metal Machine Music, and it’s about half as listenable. The first side is like having the intro music to Frasier on loop for fifteen minutes. We’re talking serious, cocktail jazz muzak here, which might drive you bonkers if you’re not in the right mood. I have no idea what said right mood could be, by the way. Xylophones are everywhere. Lawrence on the other hand is nowhere to be heard (this is a Martin Duffy/Gary Ainge collaboration). All he did was contribute the song titles, which are predictably brilliant. This is not typical Felt (even the album sleeve, a garish yellow, isn’t in keeping with the rest of their artwork), but on the other hand, it’s so bloomin’ contrary and unpredictable that in a sense, it’s perfect Felt. Just don’t ask me to listen to it too often. No one can doubt the musical chops of Duffy and Ainge (and this is the kind of muso album that the word ‘chops’ is sadly suited for), but you have to wonder what they were thinking – were they taking the piss? Sometimes, like on the title track and ‘Press Softly on the Brakes, Holly’, I can’t help but laugh – this stuff is such a perfect approximation of bland jazz noodling. But seriously, the first half of the album is without a doubt the worst stretch of any Felt album, ever.
The slower, more melancholy second half of the album does see an improvement of sorts;`Spectral Morning’ and `Teargardens’ are actually quite nice, and the tender `Book of Swords’ is really, genuinely lovely, by far and away the best thing here. Actually, I’ve been horrible towards this album, so let’s concentrate on this track. Yes, you could say it’s a little soppy and a little drippy, but this lovely piece of music has often caught me off guard and broken my wee lil’ heart. It is almost ridiculously pretty and gives me doubt that this was album was meant to be a parody, which is something I couldn’t help/hope but presume for the most part. The melody is one of Duffy’s saddest. It starts off a bit like Chicago’s much-loved wedding staple ‘Colour My World’ and then goes off on its own. A sparkling xylophone and downbeat piano combine beautifully before we get a brief but gorgeous mid-section where everything blossoms and for once, this Train Above the City album really clicks.
I guess, if you’re in a forgiving mood, you might appreciate what I assume is a joke and admire the album for its sheer wilful perversity, but I’m confident that this is most fans’ least favourite Felt album.
The Tenth Single: ‘Space Blues’
Ah, now this is more like it! Now, please don’t think I’m one of those reactionaries who only want Felt to stick to what they know, because this EP is still a departure and a step forward, but unlike Train Above the City, it’s a good one. Only the jingle-jangle of ‘Female Star’ is a bit of a throwback, as if the melodies of The Pictorial Jackson Review were shot through with the fuller sound of Forever Breathes the Lonely Word. Elsewhere, we have more evidence of Felt refusing to stand still. The pleasant country swoon of ‘Tuesday’s Secret’ points the way towards the smooth, polished but still idiosyncratic sound of their final album, and the title track’s colourful electronics point even further towards Lawrence’s next project, the glorious Denim. Backing vocals on this song are from Rose McDowall from Strawberry Switchblade, by the way! I’ve saved my favourite song here for last, and that’s the beautiful cover of The Beach Boys’ ‘Be Still’. Originally a gentle, sparse Dennis Wilson ode to serenity from the glorious 1968 album Friends, Felt make it even more quiet and totally their own. It’s the only cover they officially recorded, and is akin to floating down a never-ending river.
The not-really Eleventh Single: ‘Get Out of My Mirror’
This was a free flexidisc. No B-side. The A-side is taken from….
The Tenth Album: Me and a Monkey on the Moon
Here we are. The end of the road. The tenth album. It was something of an artistic recovery after the disappointing Train Above the City, and yet this swansong is also quite unusual in that for a Felt album, it sounds….well, normal! The opening song even talks of (not) making love! I though Felt were above all that sex stuff, you know? Produced by Adrian Borland, lead singer of another tremendous, underrated band from the 1980’s (The Sound), Felt had never sounded as polished and mainstream as they do here; the playing is immaculate, refined, and to be honest….lacking in edge. For some, this sleek new direction might prove a turn-off, and yes, there’s none of the strange magic of their earlier, classic records.
Still, it’s a damn good album, with lyrics that talk of escape and decades (and I suppose bands) coming to an end, maybe even some regrets over lost friends, all of it beautifully played and sung throughout; the opening “I Can’t Make Love To You Anymore” is very lovely, a slightly country-tinged ballad with some sweet, tender guitar and a great chorus. “Mobile Shack”, with its kooky keyboard effects here and there, hint towards Denim, but the simple, cheeky music also recalls the first side of The Pictorial Jackson Review, albeit with a smoother production. To be honest, this song isn’t really anything special, it goes by well enough and is essentially a bit of filler before the wonderful “Free” comes along, another tender and delicate ballad that feels good and sounds good too. The lyrically curious “Budgie Jacket” (is it autobiographical?) is intriguing and the sprightly “Cartoon Sky” is fun. These are good songs, you know? Well played, consummately executed… hell, even Lawrence’s vocals sound refined.
The album’s major centrepiece is “New Day Dawning”, which has a great first half; a slightly funky guitar (the verses sound like a brighter version of Poem of the River‘s “Declaration”) a shimmering chorus which indeed sounds the musical equivalent of a sunrise….and then there’s the debatable second half and its extended solo; guitar bliss or six-string cheese? Indeed, it sounds as though Oasis may have been paying attention as it sounds a lot like their “Don’t Look Back in Anger” in places. To be honest, it’s this solo that’s entirely indicative of the downside of the `normal’ Felt sound on this album; it’s admittedly well played, but it could have been played by any other guitarist. It’s totally anonymous, and character and personality, with the distinctive feel and sound of Lawrence, Martin Duffy and Maurice Deebank in particular, was what made Felt such a special band. Oh well, I can’t resist the gorgeous “Down an August Path”; it flutters, it feels good to listen to, it’s the best thing on here, definitely. The rest of the album remains solid, be it on the sweet choruses to “Never Let You Go” and “She Deals in Crosses” or particularly on the catchy closer “Get Out of My Mirror”.
Even with the lovely likes of “I Can’t Make Love to You Anymore” and “Down an August Path”, there’s nothing here that I will truly hold dear to my heart, nothing like “Spanish House”, “Fortune” or “The Day the Rain Came Down”; considering how strong this band was for its first eight and a half albums, Me and a Monkey on the Moon is a very good, but not great farewell to one of the greatest bands ever. It wasn’t the last time we’d hear from Lawrence though….he’d back….back in Denim!
Wait, that’s not all…
Collecting together some of those odds ‘n’ sods…
If it’s compilations you’re after, and they will be essential listening if you want to get those non-album singles and B-sides, then the ultimate introduction is 1992’s Absolute Classic Masterpieces, which covers Felt’s years at Cherry Red Records (excluding their brief return to the label in 1989); covered here is the era encompassing the first four albums and the best of the stray tracks; in other words, the Maurice Deebank years. Starting with with `Primitive Painters’ and working backwards, this is a mostly perfect selection of the best songs from the early years – okay, one might quibble at the absence of `I Don’t Know Which Way to Turn’ (which should definitely have taken the place of the good but not great `Textile Ranch’) and the stunning `Spanish House’, but overall this is too good to bother starting with debates about track selection. Non-album selections here are the immortal B-side version of ‘Fortune’, ‘Trails of Colour Dissolve’ (but not its flipside, the A-side ‘My Face is on Fire!), ‘Something Sends Me to Sleep’, pre-Felt oddity ‘Index’ and most interestingly, `Dance of Deliverance’, which isn’t actually a Felt track as such, being as it’s taken from Deebank’s occasionally magnificent solo album from that time (Inner Thought Zone), which takes the languid guitar mood of `Fortune’ to epic lengths. Look, Felt are one of the greatest bands ever, and this is one of the greatest compilations ever. This period in particular had an irresistible charge, dominated by Deebank and Lawrence’s winning chemistry. This is the best introduction to the band, even though it only tells half the story…
Roll on 1993’s Absolute Classic Masterpieces Vol. 2, which covers Felt’s second half of their ten year run, spent at Creation Record. These are the Martin Duffy years. Unlike Volume 1, this compilation runs in chronological order and separates album tracks and single tracks into separate CDs. Disc one (featuring singles and B-sides) is pretty short at only twenty or so minutes, which is weird considering not every B-side of this era has been included (no ‘Candles in a Church’, ‘Buried Wild Blind’, ‘Fire Circle’, ‘Tuesday’s Secret’, ‘Female Star’ are all M.I.A); nevertheless, each of these ten songs are terrific. Disc 2 covers the following albums – Let the Snakes Crinkle Their Heads to Death, Forever Breathes the Lonely Word, Poem of the River, The Pictorial Jackson Review and Train Above the City. Unfortunately Me and a Monkey on the Moon, isn’t covered as that was recorded on Cherry Red (who the band returned to before disbanding).
To be honest, despite the fact that all the pieces chosen here to represent Let the Snakes… are delightful, they don’t really have the same impact outside of the context of the original album; here they come across as too slight. Forever Breathes is well represented, although the omission of `Rain of Crystal Spires’, `September Lady’ or `Down But Not Yet Out’ does seem crazy. The Pictorial Jackson Review is well represented – we get some of the fun treats from side one, and the single good one from side two. The disastrous Train Above the City could have got away with an undeserved positive representation had tracks from its relatively decent second side had been chosen to appear on this disc, yet this CD doesn’t bother to try and mask what this album is- a bit crap – by choosing three anaemic tunes from its first side, ending this compilation on a down note. Why the lovely `Book of Swords’, wasn’t selected instead is a mystery.
Still, this is a more than worthy companion piece to its predecessor, though it is hard to find these days. If you don’t fancy shelling out for a second-hand copy, fear not; all of the second disc can be found on their respective albums, while most of disc one can now be found on the more recent retrospective Stains on a Decade. However, that album doesn’t appear to have “Magellan” or “Autumn” on it….pity. The best Creation-era compilation is the single-disc Bubblegum Perfume from 1990, which mostly avoids album tracks (but does well in highlighting ‘Book of Swords’ – bravo!) and distills the essence of the Duffy years beautifully. Still no Monkey and Moon-era stuff though. Boo! An even better CD re-release in 2011 dispensed with some of the ultimately pointless album-track selections and replaced them with the hard-to-find ‘Tuesday’s Secret’, ‘Fire Circle’ and ‘Female Star’.
As for the afore-mentioned Stains on a Decade from 2003, it’s a fine compilation, but covering ten years worth on one CD was always going to be a nightmare. Still, but limiting itself to single/EP tracks (‘Dismantled King…’ excepted), it’s about as fairly representative a single CD of the band can be, I suppose. Plus, it features the single version of ‘Sunlight Bathed…’, even if that version isn’t very good.
Finally, there was 1987’s Gold Mine Trash, which was the first Felt compilation, and a seemingly random selection of songs from the Deebank-era. It’s only really worthwhile for the inclusion of demo versions of ‘Sunlight Bathed…’ and ‘Dismantled King…’ which are well worth your time, being notably different in feel to the more familiar takes.
To my knowledge, the only Felt tracks that have never been available on CD are ‘Break It’,the original B-side version of ‘A Preacher in New England’, ‘Now Summer’s Spread Its Wings Again’, ‘Candles in a Church’ and ‘Buried Wild Blind’. There was a bonus disc made available on the Felt Box set released in 1993, which gathered a few odds and sods like the alternate ‘Something Sends Me to Sleep’, the often neglected ‘My Face is on Fire’, the single mix of ‘Sunlight Bathed…’, ‘Sunlight Strings’ and the original B-side version of ‘Red Indians’, but that’s not easy to come by.
So there you go. Now listen to the records please…
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